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Abbie Cornish, Garry McDonald, Geoffrey Rush

Candy is a beautiful young painter in the first throes of love with a sometimes-poet named Dan. Their life is so romantic and their love so intoxicating that they care only for pleasure. Heroin, they ...( read more  read more... )discover, intensifies their mutual passion and allows them to get lost in the moment, and "using" becomes a ritual that makes them feel special. In time, their habit supersedes all other aspects of their life together. They beg, borrow, and steal to pay for their next fix, and when there is nothing left to hock, they take more desperate measures. Candy sells her body. Dan lets her, and, imperceptibly, they cross a boundary as they exit Paradise and enter Hell. As the grip of their habit grows, they affirm their lover's vows by getting married. Their big day passes in a drug-induced haze of bliss. Candy's parents, conservative, middle-class folk, are bewildered by the newlyweds' strange behavior. They watch their daughter's decline, sensing that something is wrong, but incapable of stopping her. Candy and Dan's drug addiction becomes inseparable from their emotional addiction to each other. Their love, like the heroin they crave, is dangerous and destructive. When Candy suffers a nervous breakdown and ends up in rehab, the lovers face a difficult choice--their relationship, with all of its terrible highs and lows, or a second chance at life?

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79% liked it

19,471 ratings

Critics

49% liked it

74 critics

R, 1 hr. 48 min.

Directed by: Neil Armfield

Release Date: November 17, 2006

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DVD Release Date: March 27, 2007

Stats: 2,154 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (2,154)

  • benpuetz
    August 5, 2009
    benpuetz
    Candy is a rather bland and drawn out addiction movie. It goes through the motions and never fully grasped my attention. There are some moments of intrigue though. The acting was solid, but nothing great. Although I am not a fan of the film, I am a little surprised is has not...( read more) garnered more attention due to the nature of the film and Ledger's death. The film is a pass for me, but may be far more entertaining to those who can relate.
  • laVenrose
    September 28, 2008
    laVenrose
    More is never enough.

    Rated: (R)
    Directed by: Neil Armfield
    Genres: Drama, Romance
    Starring: Heath Ledger, Abbie Cornish, Geoffrey Rush

    ...( read more)ction=view¤t=candyposter.jpg" target="_blank">Photobucket


    THE MOVIE OUTLINE

    "Candy is a beautiful young painter in the first throes of love with a sometimes-poet named Dan. Their life is so romantic and their love so intoxicating that they care only for pleasure. Heroin, they discover, intensifies their mutual passion and allows them to get lost in the moment, and "using" becomes a ritual that makes them feel special. In time, their habit supersedes all other aspects of their life together. They beg, borrow, and steal to pay for their next fix, and when there is nothing left to hock, they take more desperate measures. Candy sells her body. Dan lets her, and, imperceptibly, they cross a boundary as they exit Paradise and enter Hell. As the grip of their habit grows, they affirm their lover's vows by getting married. Their big day passes in a drug-induced haze of bliss. Candy's parents, conservative, middle-class folk, are bewildered by the newlyweds' strange behavior. They watch their daughter's decline, sensing that something is wrong, but incapable of stopping her. Candy and Dan's drug addiction becomes inseparable from their emotional addiction to each other. Their love, like the heroin they crave, is dangerous and destructive. "





    MY APPRAISAL

    To begin with, I would like to apologize for saying this, but it seems that this movie lasts forever. I've just finished watching Radit & Jani, an Indonesian movie and hell I thought these movies are damn similar! Both are depressing with identical storyline. And when the film ended, I was shocked that it had only been 1 hour and 45 minutes and hell, I thought it was 4??!

    The storyline were pretty simple. But suceeded to attract the viewer's sympathy. When Candy suffers a nervous breakdown and ends up in rehab, the lovers face a difficult choice : their relationship, with all of its terrible highs and lows, or a second chance at life. They were trapped by life choices when on the same moment, difficult times await.

    Simple plots, but supported by superb actings by both leading actors. I salute Abbie Cornish for the impressive performance she delivered, because, man she was a mess! If you're looking for pretty faces, well forget it, cause you won't see any!

    Without hesitation, Heath Ledger's talent is indisputable. I mean he was THE Heath Ledger and brilliant was his middle name. He looked exactly what I expected him to be and I was really amazed. Candy would be a testimony of a man named Heath Ledger who possesed a rare greatness we find in an artist.

    A LIFE WHEN THE FAMOUS HAPPY ENDING IS TOO FAR TO PURSUE




    "Once upon a time, there was Candy and Dan.
    Things were very hot that year.
    All the wax was melting in the trees.
    He would climb balconies, climb everywhere, do anything for her, oh Danny boy.
    Thousands of birds, the tiniest birds, adorned her hair. Everything was gold..."

    -CANDY-
  • ebs90
    September 5, 2008
    ebs90
    Candy is a poetic yet very raw and no-nonsense portrait of drug addiction, as lived by Daniel and Candace. Both are very much in love with each other and carry idealistic existences in which drugs play a very central role. As is to be expected, everything is gold-showered an sug...( read more)ar-coated and whatnot during the first months of their relationship: they have money, they love each other, and since they haven't tried to stop using they don't see how difficult it will be. As Candy and Daniel start settling down and spending more time with each other and atempting to build a life, their addiction starts looking like a problem that will make them humilliate themselves for money, and humilliate each other when the pain is so big that they just have to take it out on the other.

    The chemistry between Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish is reason #1 so watch this film. Together they are intoxicating, epic, and yet beleivable. Individually, the performances are powerful and heatbreaking: Candy's transformtion from a sweet idealist who dabbles in drugs for fun to an angry addict whose hate towards the world surfaces when she is out of money is chilling. Heath Ledger's character might be less aggressive, but even when he is at his most subdued Ledger manages to communicate his state of mind to us. He adores Candy more than drugs, and that is a lot to say, but he's absolutely hopeless at anything else.

    The story itself is nothing new- the message has already been spoken both by Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream: drugs are fun in the beginning but then awful things start to happen. But Candy brings that universal problem to a very small and intimate scale, in which drug addiction has the same effect on a loving relationship as would an bomb if it fell on their house. Candy doesn't glamorize drug use, yet it doesn't use any tricks to make it more dramatic, but it often makes use of poetry voice-overs and melancholy, hazy cinematography to create an atmosphere that is between hallucination and reality.

    The film succeeds at making people care, hate, worry, pity Candy and Daniel, and that is mainly because of the excellent lead performances. Any fan of Heath Ledger should watch Candy, as should anyone who wants to watch a good performance-driven film.
  • DeppLover
    August 29, 2008
    DeppLover
    "We had a lot going for us. We'd found the secret glue that held all things together. In a perfect place, where the noise did not intrude, our world was so very complete."

    Candy is an incredibly beautiful and powerful drama that kept me engrossed and compelled within th...( read more)e story for the entire length of the film. Within this potent film is a life drama full of love, drugs and an inseparable bond between two people.

    The reason I picked up Candy to begin with was the fact that Heath Ledger has the lead role, but as this finished I found that I had witnessed much more than the gripping performance by him; but also one of the most expressive and affecting stories that I have ever seen. Heath Ledger is Dan, a poet who is very much in love with an art student; Candy. The two of them share the same lifestyle of an addiction to heroin and a lack of money. As the story goes on, it becomes clear that the only thing that matters to them is each other, and they will go to the extremes in order to stay with each other; nothing else matters. This has been done before - perhaps many times, but never to the extent that Candy has achieved. Usually this would start off with the meeting of the two, and then show how their two lives are affected as they change their lifestyle to be with each other. But this is much different, much more interesting and intriguing. We start off with the two of them already indivisible from each other, already as passionate towards each other as they are addicted to the drug. We then travel deeper into the story and meaning of the film, the consequences of the drug and their lifestyle appear and desperation takes place, causing them to give up everything but their love for each other.
    Although the whole of this film is touching and strong, there were certainly parts which were especially emotional and heartrending. The brilliant performances from the actors combined with the innovative and convincing story was arousing to an extent that I had never seen before, making the viewing mesmerizing and beautiful to watch. The directing by Neil Armfield created the atmosphere needed - both gripping and striking to watch. Something I didn't know before watching Candy, was that it is in fact based a novel - 'Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction' by Luke Davies. And it's that compelling story that holds the whole film together, that is the basis of this film which I have loved, and now I am more than interested in reading it.

    The soundtrack of Candy somehow added to the realism of the story and perfectly matched with the events at the time. This kind of thing is often overlooked with a story like this, but I certainly appreciated it. During various scenes the score made the entire film more influential and absorbing, which is exactly what was needed to make this film even better than what could have been achieved.

    Heath Ledger was exceptional and unparalleled, exceeding everything I would have expected from him. This has to be one of his best performances that I have seen, and watching this has made me admire him for his talents, as well as distressed that he had so much more to offer that we will never see. Abbie Cornish was incredible for her role as Candy, creating a character that had my sympathy as she expressed every emotion perfectly and spoke every line to a level that was incomparable. The chemistry between Ledger and Cornish was also something that can't be compared, the two of them together on screen is hard to describe - they have talent together that is very rare to see. Geoffrey Rush was a nice addition to the cast, and I felt he gave an incredible performance which was needed for his role. Overall, the acting in Candy can simply be described as brilliant and potent. A cast perfectly fitted to the characters, all giving moving performances.

    In the end, Candy was a riveting and expressive film that I am very glad to have seen. Full of amazing performances and an interesting and unique story, this is a film that really should be seen by all fans of dramas and love stories. Of course, if you are a fan of Heath Ledger then this is a film that you simply can't ignore. A successful Australian drama film.
  • sononothing
    August 14, 2008
    sononothing
    Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish star as two twentysomething heroine addicts in Australian director Neil Armfield's Candy, the story of how drugs affect the couple love and lives. Cornish plays the title character who has fallen for the poet Dan and also proceeds to fall into the d...( read more)rug induced haze that Dan has slipped into. Ledger is amazing as Dan, the drug addict who doesn't know how to do anything except write poems and score smack. Geoffrey Rush also graces us once again playing Dan's father figure Casper, a drug creating organic chemist who looks after the pair in a weird way.
    Candy gracefully tells the story of how this pair fell in and out of love with eachother and how drugs were always the underlying theme throughout their relationship. They seem unable to function without the fix almost as if heroine is the glue that holds them together. A depressing view, yet not to the point of being preachy. This film would probably work better than many of the Just Say No ads that have ran for the last 20 years. Begging, mooching, stealing, and hooking are all ways of life for the pair as they go through their young lives in a daze. A sad, thought provoking look that deserves some attention.
  • ysage1118
    November 19, 2009
    ysage1118
    I like such drug theme movies.
  • xweirdox
    October 28, 2009
    xweirdox
    It did touch me somewhere .....!
  • ElCochran90
    October 27, 2009
    ElCochran90
    And another drug-addict film hits the theaters!
    ---
    The result? Errr... Damn, I don't know. It has a poetical tone and smart photography, but it doesn't contribute to provide the questionings and powerful statements that other films of the genre achieved to impose. Nice perform...( read more)ances, yes, but the premise falls half the way through the film and the most noticeable anti-Hollywod intention of the predictable ending didn't save the rest. It's good to watch, but it was unnecessary.

    63/100
  • jezzstjezz
    October 26, 2009
    jezzstjezz
    And I thought it would be just another junkie movie.

    It actually changed my whole perspective in junkie movies... I'm not a really big fan of Heath Ledger, but his performance here is outstanding.
    Surprisingly stunning film.
  • OmenSG
    October 17, 2009
    OmenSG



    Photobucket


    Dan: [reading] Here is
    ...( read more)the deepest secret nobody knows. Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide. And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart... I carry your heart, I carry it in my heart.

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Critic Reviews

December 14, 2006
Colin Covert, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Both actors are immensely impressive, so perversely appealing that you want them to survive their addiction and keep on with their terrific performances. full review

December 1, 2006
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

There's a formula here, and it's not the liquid being shot into popping veins. full review

November 30, 2006
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

As good as the main performances are, they're inevitably flatter than the language of the film's narrator. full review

November 17, 2006
Kyle Smith, New York Post

I'm not sure there's a lot more to say about heroin addiction, but if there is, Candy doesn't say it. full review

October 19, 2006
Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

An Australian rendition of Requiem for a Dream in which pretty people live in filth, steal from their relatives, and turn tricks in order to satiate their narcotics cravings. full review

View more Candy reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments

  • egogirl
    August 3, 2008
    egogirl
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8y94CA7a4A&feature=related


    gotta love the poem.
  • llbittersweetll
    August 19, 2007
    llbittersweetll
    its a great tragedy abiie cornish and heath ledger's performances are too real i cant stand feel pity for them and its an easy job to feel the romance between the two ,also the soundtracks are awesome especialy the oppening scene takes me in the movie from the first moment.
  • stephsaquilon
    July 15, 2007
    stephsaquilon
    i read the book first before i saw the movie. i think that the movie kinda exaggerated the whole story. candy had a miscarriage months before dan and her went through the withdrawal days.... i suggest to read the novel together with the film. :)
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