Last update: December 07, 2006 – 3:45 PM
Movie review: Addict drama 'Candy' won't let you go
By Colin Covert, Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN


The Australian drug drama "Candy" opens with a scene of two attractive young lovers (Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish) taking a giddy ride on a carnival whirligig. It's a great image for the headlong rush of true love, but since the lovebirds are heroin addicts, it's also a reflection of two lives spiraling down the drain, ecstatic highs souring into nightmarish lows.


The film never pleads forgiveness for Dan, a weak-willed poet, and headstrong artist Candy. Apart from their passionate commitment to each other, there's not much to admire about the pair. Candy is a selfish and ungrateful daughter, abusing her parents at the wedding reception they've paid for, and Dan betrays only a smidgen of guilt about letting his bride prostitute herself for a fix. It's helpful, then, that Ledger and Cornish are so attractive and such stellar performers, because the characters need all the sympathy they can get.

Ledger's work is on a par with his "Brokeback Mountain" triumph and Cornish, last seen as the pretty brunette Californian in "A Good Year," is a revelation. Both actors are immensely impressive, so perversely appealing that you want them to survive their addiction and keep on with their terrific performances.

Tough and bleak though the story is -- Ledger grows convincingly lean and wasted as it goes on -- it is told with emotional sensitivity and candor. Their free-falling affair is presented in three chapters charting their descent from "Heaven" to "Earth" and ultimately "Hell."

Geoffrey Rush contributes an outstanding performance as a friendly drug dealer who relishes the pair's beauty and breezy spirits because he knows how they will inevitably end. "When you can stop, you don't want to," he cautions. "When you want to stop, you can't." Watching the addictively compelling "Candy," you feel the same way.