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Candy (2006 film) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Candy

Theatrical release poster Directed by Neil Armfield Margaret Fink Produced by Emile Sherman Neil Armfield Written by Luke Davies Heath Ledger Starring Abbie Cornish Geoffrey Rush Music by Paul Charlier Cinematography Garry Phillips Editing by Dany Cooper Distributed by Renaissance Films Release date(s) 25 May 2006 116 min. (Australia) Running time 108 min. (Hong Kong) Country Australia Language English IMDb profile

Candy is a 2006 Australian romantic drama film, adapted from Luke Davies's novel entitled Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction. Candy was directed by debut film-maker Neil Armfield and stars Heath Ledger, Abbie Cornish and Geoffrey Rush.

Candy, produced by Margaret Fink, was released in Australia on 25 May 2006 and subsequently released around the world.

Plot A poet named Dan (Heath Ledger) falls in love with an art student named Candy (Abbie Cornish) who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle - and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair. The film is organized in three acts of roughly 7 scenes each, titled Heaven, Earth, and Hell. In Heaven, rough sex and drugs are experienced ecstatically by the young lovers. In Earth they are married and confront the reality of the untenability of addiction and family life. In Hell they experience the dissolution of their relationship and the recovery of one of the characters.

Director Neil Armfield's devastating tale of heroin addiction and young romance is a beautifully framed and handsomely performed urban drama.

REVIEW BY AVRIL CARRUTHERS . A beautifully shot film about the seductive, scintillating slide into the selfdestruction of heroin addiction with all its ramifications on one’s life and family, Candy is a tour de force by its actors, writers and the filmmakers. It’s a remarkable effort, because while telling its woeful tale in as truthful a manner as it may be possible to portray, it is not an enjoyable experience. But it is compelling. It’s both a slice of life and a journey into degradation for two young hedonists that starts with irresistible pleasure-seeking and escapism and becomes a willless gravitational pull into the abdication of self where the drug slinks in to impose itself on personality and functionality. Such is addiction. It becomes its own reason for existence and its purpose is self-annihilation. Based on the novel by Luke Davies who also co-wrote the screenplay, it’s portrayed extraordinarily well by director Neil Armfield, veteran theatre director in his feature film debut. Artist Candy (Abbie Cornish) meets poet Dan (Heath Ledger) and the irresistible magnetism of their giddy love is aptly portrayed by the fairground Gravitron ride where they abandon themselves helplessly to the giant centrifuge. We see it from above and it’s a telling image. An integral part of the seduction of their ion is a heady lack of responsibility and lack of forethought for consequences. Dan introduces Candy to heroin. Cinematographer Garry Phillips’s cinematic expertise portrays the pull of addiction with glamour and romance, while the ensuing self-absorbed degeneration of their relationship, and the seamy environments they progressively find themselves reduced to living in, are shown with stark realism and detachment. The harrowing process of Dan and Candy’s first serious cold turkey, on the occasion of her pregnancy, gives a disionate, fly-on-the-wall depiction of their shuddering pain, sweating, vomiting and insane cravings. They stay together for it all, even when they each resort to hooking for their hit money. Dan’s resourceful criminal enterprise shows creative flair, ability to plan and follow through, plus inspired daring that could be put to lucrative, honest means. It’s a point made to him by Caspar (Geoffrey Rush), as he helps Dan look the part of the young man he’s about to impersonate and rob. Caspar is an extraordinary character and beautifully, insouciantly played by Rush. A university professor of chemistry, he’s evidently effortlessly wealthy (with an ‘old money’ house in a prestigious area of Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs), and he’s Dan’s mentor in hedonism and addictive substances which he distils himself from codeine. He calls it ‘Jesus juice’. Playing Candy’s parents, the Wyatts, are an agonised Noni Hazlehurst and Tony Martin. The family dynamic is acidly, electrically evident. It’s Mr Wyatt’s bottom-of-the-heart, and –barrel, plea to Dan, in the car park of the psychiatric hospital where Candy is recovering, which sets up Dan’s final redemptive act of love. Their individual choices, shown in the last shot, are only the first step of thousands of devastatingly difficult decisions. It’s a tiny drop of nobility and determination to value self in a morass of self-disgust and fragile self-worth. It ends where last year’s Little Fish might begin.

Noni Hazlehurst’s trio of heroin films - Monkey Grip (1982), Little Fish (2005) and now Candy show three different sides of the peripheral contributory causes and effects of heroin addiction. Here she demonstrates once again her consummate skill, making Elaine Wyatt a desperately afraid, albeit controlling and critical, parent. Tony Martin is equally powerful, his pain visibly restrained. As Candy, Abbie Cornish (Somersault, 2004) is a willing, wilful will-o-the-wisp in the tornado that is about to rip her life apart, at least partly determined to do so to spite her mother. Heath Ledger’s Dan is one of the most truthful portrayals of his many-varied and talented career. That he’s playing a gritty, contemporary, urban fringe character for once, following his dashing romantic role as Casanova, is refreshing and reminds of his stunning performance in Two Hands (1999). While we are shown something of the overwhelming exhilaration heroin gives, and the singlefocused desperation and apathy of addiction, it’s more difficult to show an inner state of determination based on regained pride, or self-worth through keeping straight, through the constant, constant denial of the pull to pure pleasure of old demons. Filmically, the bliss states are conveyed with much the same sort of approach as Little Fish. It’s a spin into blurred boundaries, it’s no limits, it’s frighteningly, compellingly seductive. It’s destructivity is all but complete. Overall, the film is devastating.