Candy

This is a brilliant film featuring an excellent screenplay, outstanding acting and consummate directing.

It is dark but wonderfully romantic. Most importantly, it is truthful. It is an Australian 'Requiem for a dream' but with far greater depth.

It may not be traditionally commercial but who would have thought a film about two gay cowboys would be commercial?

I say well done to the Producer and the whole team for their work. I would also say that this has inspired me to look at Australian theatre directors for future features.

PS. Abbie and Heath were seamless. So good to see talent like these two working together and doing so in Australia.

David Steinhoff CEO Presence Films Sydney Australia

Amazing but harsh Candy is 'Trainspotting' meets 'Romeo and Juliet'. Opening with a haunting melody and the two lovers on a fairground ride it feels very picturesque and idealistic, but that doesn't last very long I'm afraid. Mixing poetic voice-overs and montages of the pair involved in each other as the world orbits around them they are so in love and oblivious and addicted. Told in a triptych the first third of the film is called 'heaven' and deals with the honeymoon period of the relationship, the second third is called 'earth' and deals with the start of the end and it doesn't take a genius to work out that the third is called 'hell' and is just that. Candy and Dan are addicted to each other and addicted to heroin. They steal, lie, cheat and wheel and deal, whatever it takes to get the cash they need for the next fix, but when the fixes are few and far between there becomes no limit to how far they will go. Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish are brilliant as the arm spiked lovers who both brood with an intensity that shines out when they are acting being on drugs or the brutal scenes when they are trying to come off them. They are mesmerising to watch and at all times you either hate them for how much they are destroying each other or empathise with them for what they are going through. You can't help but go through the experience with them because it is so graphic and not unlike the needles gets right under your skin. Geoffrey Rush who plays a strange semi-gay drugged up Uncle Monty type character, who not only supplies but manufactures some of the drugs for the pair and even shoots up with them, is very unnerving as the father figure Dan always wanted but never had. Even the later part of the last third, despite its nature, still holds elements of beauty and I would be surprised if there was a dry eye in the house as the film reaches its climax. If you ever wanted a way to show children the evils of drugs then show them this film, it never glorifies the use of substances and if anything it is garishly honest all the way through, although not an easy watch it is an amazing portrayal of the power that addictions, good or bad, can hold and just how far humans are capable of going for love. This really is a journey into the heart of darkness.

'Candy' will probably garner several AFI awards later this year. Ledger is Dan, a troubled and likable juvenile-come-poet who is in love with Cornish's Candy, a sometimes-practicing artist who falls head first in love with Dan and heroin. Ledger's understated performance gives Dan a boyish vulnerability that would otherwise leave him less sympathetic. And his ability to use his face and especially his eyes to communicate Dan's uncanny reluctance is both staggering and understandable. There are many moments where silence is used to express emotions in this film and Armfield deserves to be commended for his restraint and trust in his actors and the narrative. The script by co-writer and author Davies is decidedly different from the novel but nonetheless strong and taut. It's rarely melodramatic and has been manipulated more for it's performers and their execution on screen rather than resigning itself as merely an adaptation of a great novel. The result here provides superb cinematic balance. Cornish too is brilliant, often abrasive as the troubled artist. Rush is also amazing and understated as Casper, Dan's older homosexual friend. Hazelhurst reprises her role in 'Little Fish' but to less effect. She is great, but those who have seen 'Little Fish' will find her casting a little too convenient. Martin too is good with the little he is dealt. The only thing that stops 'Candy' from being superb is the material. It is too familiar and the characters are too stereotypical. Had this film been made before countless others in the 'drug-film' genre this would have been more refreshing (although the denouement is a much welcomed change). But sadly it isn't. This in turn is nobody's fault. It's just been exploited too many times. The only thing that isn't stereotypical is Dan who is the backbone of the narrative. Ledger has made it his own and could have mimicked any drug-stricken angsty protagonist the 'genre' has spat out. Instead he has made him a hero.

Despite a couple of good reviews, I approached this film with foreboding. Movies about junkies in love, taken from searing autobiographical first novels are usually not what I would call entertaining, though there have been worthy earlier Australian efforts such as "Winter of Our Dreams" (with Judy Davis and Bryan Brown) and "Monkey Grip" (which starred Noni Hazelhurst and Colin Friels). As "Trainspotting" showed it is possible to be light –hearted about drugs and addiction but the storyline here is far from cheering and there is no Hollywood-style happy ending. However it did not turn out as gruesome as I feared it might.

This was partly because of two stunning performances by Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish as the not very happy couple, Dan and Candy. Somehow, Heath got it just right as the shambling, disorganized, would-be poet, who is nonetheless capable of pulling off an effective scam when required. Abbie gave us a beautiful, headstrong and dangerous Candy. Their scenes together are as intense and as convincing as you will get in the movies. They were both well supported by Tony Martin and Nonie Hazlehurst as Candy's parents and Geoffrey Rush as their supplier and friend Casper. Geoffrey Rush is a dangerous actor to use in a supporting role because of his ability to steal scenes, but he produces a wonderfully ambiguous character as a counterpoint to the intensity of the leads.

Caspar makes an interesting remark about drug usage: "When you're on it you don't want to stop, when you want to stop you can't." Artists have particular trouble since they see drugs as feeding creativity. Even so, some people break the habit. I hate to use the term "self–discipline" but that and the support of those close to you seem to be crucial factors. Being in love with another addict does not seem to be a great help, for obvious reasons. The Thought Police will be pleased that drug-taking is not glamourised and Dan and Candy's experiences are a mite painful, but the movie does not take a judgmental stance. If we had to have another movie about junkies in love, this is the one.

"Candy" is one of those films where you walk away feeling a little bit stunned by the awful reality it exposes. It is not a pretty film nor a pretty subject, but as another "drug" film, at least we can feel an empathy for the main characters,whilst the horror of heroin addiction is still depicted.

It is this balance that sets "Candy" apart from many other druggie pics.The love between Candy and Dan is very real. Affectionate, painful,hopeful and hopeless, it transcends the heroin story to the extent where we really hope everything will work out for them; though we're taken on the ride of rapid decline so familiar with this drug.

Much credit for this balance lies with an excellent story and direction from Neil Armfeld (more familiar with theatre in Australia), and some superb acting from Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish in the leads.Geoffrey Rush has a delicious support role as Dan's friend Casper,a "mentor" whom we suspect is a little tormented by his own influences.Tony Martin and Noni Hazelhurst round out the main supports as Candy's suffering parents,loving but helpless as they observe their daughter's descent into a world they never knew.

Like drug problems in real life, all the characters enmeshed in the mess are frail, vulnerable,emotional and ill. They are good and bad.They blame each other and themselves. They look everywhere for solutions that might work,yet we suspect the ultimate solution is too difficult.

I suspect that in years to come,this will become one of the ultimate drug pics to show to teenagers. Not hopeless like Trainspotting,nor in anyway melodramatic like so many others(Clean and sober,28 days etc..), it shows the horrors of drug addiction whilst maintaining its humanity.The ending may be disappointing for some, but it remains true to the love, hope and uncertainty central to this film and to anyone who lives with recovery.