CANDY (2006)

Director: Neil Armfield

Writer: Luke Davies

Abbie Cornish as Candy
Heather Ledger as Dan
Also Geoffrey Rush, Tony Martin, Noni Hazlehurst.

Davies adapts his own award-winning novel, about love and addiction and the love of addiction, for the screen. This follows last year's Little Fish, also an Australian drug film, but improves on it rather well. It charts the sensuality of early love wonderfully, capturing the physical attraction between Candy and Dan played by two outstanding young actors and adeptly directed by theatre veteran Armfield. What makes this a better film even than Requiem for a Dream is its lyrical quality and musical touch, which just casts enough glow over what is inevitably a tragic tale to leave the viewer with a layered impression of life's complexities, unlike Requiem's one dimensional journey. This is love at its most raw and painful incarnation, but it is love.