Oh Lord. Pretty actors vomiting into buckets. Pseudo-poetic voiceover documenting a doomed romance. Underwater shots from the swimming pool. A descent into prostitution. Shooting up in the bath. Tim Buckley’s ‘Song To The Siren’. A dead baby. Writing on walls. Nervous breakdown. Sections entitled ‘Heaven’, ‘Earth’ and ‘Hell’. Sigh. It can only be another smack movie. Drugstore Cowboy has a lot to answer for.
With some notable exceptions – take a bow, Adam And Paul – heroin addiction in the movies is the preserve of errant bohemians. Sure enough, Neil Armfield’s film stars Mumblin’ Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish as a poet and a painter who get carried away with naughty recreational activities. He sweats a little, but, fear not, nobody’s teeth rot through. She works a brothel, then the streets, but can always fall back on Geoffrey Rush, an associate chemistry professor who can rustle something up if you’re stuck. Besides, there’s always mummy and daddy.
Like fellow-Aussie addiction drama Little Fish, one can’t help but feel this is little more than a showcase for stars taking time out from their hectic Hollywood schedule. There is no sense of a wider world or gritty social context, only two bratty characters drunk on narcissistic tendencies. To be fair, it’s not intolerable. Following a disastrously unconvincing turn in A Good Year, at least Abbie Cornish gets to shout a little between lengthy, dreamy shots of her cascading blonde hair. Still, watching Candy, one can’t help but turn into Lord Tebbit. Like, get on your bike and get a bloody job you lot. And I don’t suppose that was the point.