Candy
Australian director Neil Armfield adapts his fellow countryman Luke Davies's novel about the tempestuous relationship between two young heroin addicts played by Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish
Candy has been marketed in its journey around the international film festival circuit as a tale of amour fou rather than as a drama about substance addiction, yet it sticks closely to the blueprint that was laid down in Darren Aronofsky's adaptation of Hubert Selby Jnr's 'Requiem For A Dream': the highs of the users are replaced by nightmarish lows, and intoxicating pleasure gives way to a descent into degradation. Divided into three portentously titled chapters, 'Heaven', 'Hell' and 'Earth', Candy begins with the new lovers, the would-be poet Dan (Ledger) and artist Candy (Cornish), who are experiencing the rotor ride in Sydney's Luna Park. Here, in a giant spinning barrel, the forces of gravity pin the participants to the sides of the drum. It's a scene of exhilaration and of regression to childhood thrills, yet it's also a precursor of the emotional turbulence that will grip the characters. When Candy first asks Dan if she can inject heroin intravenously, his murmured response is, "No, baby." She persists - "I want to do it your way." He relents, and the needle is buried into her arm. That she nearly overdoses from this first hit does not prove a hindrance: her first words on coming round are, "That was beautiful. Let's have some more." Armfield and cinematographer Garry Phillips strive to give these early sequences a golden-hued glow. Sunlight streams in from windows and illuminates the lithe bodies of Dan and Candy in swimming pools. The loss of paradise is inevitable, however. Money is always needed to pay for their habits, which means the pawning of possessions, shoplifting, hustling, and in the case of Candy, prostitution. Moving away from the temptations of Sydney to the countryside doesn't cure old habits, and the film's colour palette grows ever more desaturated. Worse is to come in the course of a stint of cold turkey and the agony and despair engendered by a stillbirth. Presumably the filmmakers are showing that addiction is a full-time business, and that the junkies themselves have to go to extraordinary lengths to fulfill their needs, while remaining in psychological denial. It's an argument made more succinctly and much more amusingly in Trainspotting. As with Requiem For A Dream, there's something problematic about seeing beautiful actors attempting to resemble gaunt, pallid, lank-haired addicts, and is it just coincidence that it's the female characters - played by Ellen Burstyn and Jennifer Connolly in Requiem, and here by Cornish - who endure the greatest physical and mental punishments? Noni Hazlehurst and Tony Martin are given the underwritten roles of Candy's parents who, though loving and patient, simply can't see any connection between their daughter's adult addiction and her childhood experiences. It's Geoffrey Rush, in the supporting role of openly gay university chemist Caspar, cooking up his own 'Jesus Juice', and serving as a surrogate father to Dan, who provides the most entertaining moments, and it's typical of the film's formulaic nature that his hedonism has to meet a tragic end. Verdict Another graphic account of heroin misuse ruining lives, powered by the intense lead performances. Yet while straining for lyricism, Candy suffers from narrative predictability. |
