Candy (2006 film)

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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 self-
destruction 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 will-
less 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 passion 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 dispassionate, 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 single-
focused 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.