Boy, that heroin stuff sure is bad news bears.
Candy, Australian director Neil Armfield's adaptation of Luke Davies's novel, does little more than leave us with that very conclusion. Not to devalue the moral that "drugs are bad," but the young-and-in-love-and-shoot-up-together genre is jonesing for a creativity injection that Candy doesn't provide. Striking Aussies Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish (2004's Somersault) star as would-be poet Dan and kind-of artist Candy. Once Candy decides to inject (rather than snort) because she wants to try "Dan's way" - a.k.a. the non-pussy way - the two descend into a spiral of lying, stealing and hooking to get their fix.
They often seek help from Casper, the eccentric gay academic who serves as a father figure and heroin-provider for young lost souls. Played with wit and ease by Geoffrey Rush, Casper is not only Dan and Candy's saving grace, but the film's as well, for although Ledger and Cornish display authentic chemistry on screen, their dialogue is uneven.
Also frustrating is the film's consistency; the imagery Armfield employs to depict the highs and lows of addiction are as hackneyed as a movie in which the title character's name is symbolic of something annoyingly obvious. Candy is divided into three sections: heaven, earth and hell, which echo Requiem for a Dream's Summer, Fall and Winter. Other sights and sounds we've seen and heard before include an abundance of needle close-ups, a recurring slow-motion underwater sequence, a time-lapse aerial shot of four days of bedside withdrawal, and violin and cello scoring. From the film's opening blurred image of a spinning amusement park ride, it's clear that what may have been imaginative description in Davies's prose is little more than clich‚d imagery on Armfield's screen.
As Candy says to the rent collector who she and Dan can't pay, "We're junkies. I'm a hooker. He's hopeless." Despite the valiant efforts of its cast, that's pretty much Candy's whole story.
