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Candy (2006)

Candy (2006), alongside the recently reviewed Looking for Grace, belongs to a sub-genre that could be dubbed "parental nightmares", in which children turn out to be evil (e.g. We Need to Talk About Kevin) or are besieged by the evils of the world (off the top of my head, Hardcore, Ransom, Taken, My Sister's Keeper, Thirteen, Beautiful Boy, Rabbit Hole, Babyteeth, to name a few). In the case of Candy, the nightmare experienced by parents Elaine and Jim (Noni Hazlehurst and Tony Martin) is watching their daughter Candy (Abbie Cornish) in the throes of heroin addiction. Hazlehurst experienced this nightmare previously in Little Fish, as the mother of Cate Blanchett’s recovering junkie, and a quarter century earlier dated Colin Friels’ heroin addict in Monkey Grip, making her an onscreen avatar for women contending with addicts in their orbit.   

Lest the above suggest the film is told from Elaine and Jim’s viewpoints, it’s actually squarely focused on Candy and her similarly addicted boyfriend Dan, played by Heath Ledger. Moving through three Acts charting their deterioration—Heaven, Earth, Hell—the film showcases Ledger and Cornish’s promising talent and thwarted potential: the former by his tragic death, the latter by subsequent career opportunities (she’s had a successful career by most yardsticks, but Somersault and Candy remain very high early peaks). Both deserved better, as attested by their excellent work here as two lost souls, albeit frequently unsympathetic ones, with Cornish in particular tapping into a raw nerve.

Co-screenwriter Luke Davies’ source novel is subtitled “A Novel of Love and Addiction”, and Davies and director/co-scribe Neil Armfield (primarily a theatre director), cinematographer Garry Phillips (Burning Man), and editor Dany Cooper (The Sapphires) succeed in capturing the swoony—and here dangerously intertwined—highs of young love and addiction, as well as the corresponding and escalating miserable lows and the souring of said romance. Composer Paul Charlier and the sound team also contribute significantly to these contrasts, with the lush, soft sound design of the highs contrasting with the more pronounced effects and coarser diegetic sounds accompanying the lows. 

Ben

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