HARD CANDY

HARD CANDY

Every decade and culture has its own demons, but surely historians will look back on the current preoccupation with paedophilia as something particularly associated with our age. This is not to denigrate the crime, but its treatment: as 'personal tragedy' stories overtake conventional bibliographies in many bookstores and certain tabloid newspapers try to generate unhelpful, unmeasured panic, the media's predilection for insalubrious story-making is matched only by its fearful treatment of recent additions to the media fold, with the internet coming in for the brunt of this burden of distrust. Provided that the given outlook is suitably polemic and outraged, then stories of abuse are there to be found in any given week and in any given amount of detail. And as horror as a genre tends to magnify and refract current social concerns, it is inevitable that a film like Hard Candy (2005) would eventually come into existence.

Hard Candy conflates both the fear of online 'grooming' (now in itself a negatively-charged byword for any sort of initiation into anything from a belief system to a distasteful hobby) with the threat of child abuse - and then turns it on its head. In the film, thirty-something photographer Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson) agrees to meet up with a girl he's been flirting with in an internet chatroom. The girl in question has a username which suggests she's fourteen years old, but Jeff isn't dissuaded from practically propositioning her online - and she reciprocates. Their first meeting continues the flirtation in a Daily Mail-baiting scene where the first thing Jeff does upon meeting his young companion Hayley (Ellen Page) is to wipe chocolate from her mouth and devour it himself. Hayley seems vivacious, intelligent, but very naïve. She also looks like she's the age she said she was. Jeff takes control of the situation, asking all the right questions, buying Hayley a gift, and it seems like she's keen on going back to his place. Again, Jeff is all too keen himself, and agrees - plying her with alcohol when they get there and struggling to keep his eyes off her.

And here the film detours sharply from what could have been an exploitation film of a much earlier age. Just as Jeff reaches for his camera, he begins to zone in and out of consciousness. It seems that Hayley's offhand comment that she 'never drinks anything she hasn't mixed herself' could have taught Jeff a thing or two, as he passes out…and when he awakes, Hayley has tied him to a chair and is asking some questions of her own. It seems Hayley has been watching Jeff for some time. She suspects him of involvement with child pornography and begins the process of taking Jeff's apartment to pieces in order to look for clues as to the level of his involvement, whilst doing a good job of getting under Jeff's skin by interrogating him about his past relationships. Jeff protests his innocence, but Hayley suspects him of being involved with the disappearance of another young girl and will stop at nothing to submit her erstwhile host to - you've guessed it - a bit of vigilante justice.

The characterisation in this film is very good: in a film that is massively dialogue-heavy, sound characters are really a must. Wilson's character undergoes a progression from sinister charmer to pathetic and all the way back again, while Ellen Page's performance as an underage girl with a few demons of her own is undoubtedly the high point of the film. I have to commend the bravery of the casting team for choosing a girl who looks like a believable fourteen year old (although she was actually around eighteen years old during filming, and to be fair, at no point are we unequivocally told that Hayley is really fourteen). However, many Hollywood films would not have even considered using her for the part, and this tough decision makes the film's themes work more efficiently than they would with any obligatorily-older actress. The team about to remake Let the Right One In would do well to remember this, when they inevitably cast a seventeen year old in Eli's role in the upcoming remake, Let Me In.

However, that which lends strength to Hard Candy is also its Achilles heel. Though its excellent choice of lead actress is deliberate, so too is its attempt to yield a strong reaction, even sometimes at the expense of a cogent plot. Personally, I think a film derives impact a lot more strongly from organic plot development rather than the sort of deliberate button-pressing which can often mar films, for example, as in some modern French 'shock' horrors. The pursuit of strong reactions drives the writing, but it's a risk. The film's (non-) castration scene is an example of this impulse to repulse. Written into the film, it seems, as a deliberate, protracted and squirm-inducing inversion of male-female violence, it ultimately lacks the courage of its convictions. And although the male lead is ambiguous enough to complicate an otherwise straightforward 'torture porn' set-up (a term I use for convenience's sake, mind you) it might have been even more powerful if his was a mistaken identity. This would have had interesting implications for the type of vigilantism inflicted on him, and also for Hayley's character - although the implications for a teenager who has done the things she has are pretty interesting in any case - as well as any social commentary embedded in the film as a whole.

Hard Candy is a well-scripted, very well-acted and, in its way, daring take on a very modern preoccupation. A film which could not have been made at any other time in history, I have a feeling that, in years to come, it will be one of those films which becomes a document as much as a source of entertainment. Its flaws are that it has perhaps striven to shock, when any cinematic treatment of these looming, unpalatable themes by such complex characters in a well-made film such as this would have shocked in any case.

The DVD release (Lionsgate/Vulcan) has a tonne of extras, including audio commentaries with the actor and writer as well as with the two lead actors, deleted/extended scenes, a 'making of' documentary, a 'Controversial Confection' featurette (looking at some of the themes in the film) and a Script and Director's Notebook. The film comes in a decent 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.

Review by Keri O'Shea


 
Released by Lions Gate Home Ent. UK Ltd
Region 2 - PAL
Rated 18
Extras :
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