Ledger embraces risky role in 'Candy'
Saturday, November 18, 2006
BY STEPHEN WHITTY
Star-Ledger Staff


Candy
® ThinkFilm (108 min.)
Directed by Neil Armfield. With Heath Ledger, Abbie Cornish, Geoffrey Rush. Now playing exclusively at the Angelika in New York.
Stars: 3 1/2


In the first hour of the new Australian film "Candy," Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish are a pair of heroin addicts on a downward spiral. They live in poverty and degradation, slip into prostitution and crime, and are finally faced with ill health, homelessness and near-death. This half of the film is titled "Heaven."

That the concluding half is called "Hell" should give you a fair idea of what to expect.

Like several recent 12-step films -- the rock'n' roll "Clean," the Jersey-set "Sherrybaby" -- "Candy" is interested only in the present. We begin with the characters already addicted. We watch them get worse, try to clean up, fail and try again. There's no neat ending.

As in those other films, the performance is the thing. Luckily, "Candy" -- based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Australian poet Luke Davies -- has attracted some serious talent, including Heath Ledger, making his first film back home in eight years, and Geoffrey Rush, making one of his periodic returns.

For Rush, it's the chance to play a ripe part, a witty gay junkie with a dangerous gift for chemistry. For Ledger, it's the opportunity to do the sort of flat-out, high-risk role young actors often claim to be desperate for, but are rarely willing to chase.

As Dan, Ledger gets to do all the things lesser actors always look for in these roles -- the high spirits, the crying jags, the screaming bouts of withdrawal. But he also gets to play the sort of character they won't -- the weakling, the follower, the sort of easily led loser who lets his wife turn tricks for drug money (then ends up doing most of the drugs himself, before remembering to bring some home).

For any male performer, playing this kind of part is a risk; for Ledger, who shot it shortly after "Brokeback Mountain," it's outright bravery. (There's even a funny line in the film, made funnier by Ledger's filmography; apologizing to his wife for prostituting her, he says he'd be willing to hustle but just wouldn't be any good at "that gay stuff.")

Nearly matching him is the young Australian actress Abbie Cornish. She made absolutely no impression as the ingénue in last week's "A Good Year," but little was called for then; she's much better here, as a hopeful artist who embraces hard drugs as part of the "bohemian lifestyle," but soon finds herself selling her body.

Unfortunately, Neil Armfield's straight-forward direction is too kind, treating Dan and Candy's thievery as pranks, and avoiding some of the nastier elements of drug use. The story's preoccupation with the middle of things also deprives us of context and conclusion -- we have no idea of how Dan and Candy got to this point, or what we should take away from their story, beyond the wonder of these three fine performances.

They're enough to make this movie hold our interest. But they're not quite enough to engage our sympathy.


Rating note: The film contains nudity, sexual situations, strong language and substance abuse.

Stephen Whitty is a film critic for The Star-Ledger.
Source: New Jersey Star Ledger