Powerful ‘Candy’ has its rewards

“Candy” is not saccharine sweet but, rather, dark and difficult — more like swallowing a pill than noshing on a treat.

It’s named after its lead female character, a young painter who falls in love with a poet and is seduced by his other mistress: smack. Call it a love triangle of sorts.

Aussie Luke Davies first introduced the story in his 1997 novel of the same name, which he has described as a “thinly veiled autobiography,” and it took him and acclaimed Australian theater director Neil Armfield six years to translate his written passages into cinematic scenes.

The result is a sometimes stingingly painful, sometimes ineffective tale of junkie love, starring compatriots Abbie Cornish (Candy) and Heath Ledger (Dan).

Dan and Candy are a stunningly handsome couple whose initially gasping-for-air love turns suffocating when Dan’s heroin habit sucks in Candy. Their relationship and its drug-induced arc from enchanting to grotesque resembles that of “Requiem for a Dream’s” Harry Goldfarb and Marion Silver, and is equally likely to make audiences squirm.

Rather than sparking the two artists’ creativity and uniting them as a couple, dope derails their crafts and their coalition. Candy will prostitute herself, suffer a miscarriage and eventually endure a total breakdown.

Whereas Candy’s art appears briefly at the movie’s outset and during her crackup, Dan’s is all but invisible. Mr. Davies’ poetic leanings, vivid throughout his book, instead find themselves relegated to Dan’s narration. These diatribes don’t do much for the movie and come off sounding trite, for the most part. For example, “The world is very bewildering to a junkie.” (Duh.)

“Candy” packs visual punch, however. From the very first dizzying, light-filled scene of Dan and Candy giggling on a centrifuge ride, Garry Phillips’ cinematography telegraphs precisely the right emotion through its tone and composition. Similarly, the musical score and editing play up the heroin-fueled highs and slow-motion lows.

While the film certainly doesn’t write any new chapters on heroin abuse, it gives Miss Cornish and Mr. Ledger raw, meaty roles to play, which they carry off with aplomb — and palpable chemistry.

Like any drug, “Candy” has some unintended side effects for those consuming it, but for those involved in its mostly well-packaged production, the benefits may outweigh the drawbacks.

**1/2

TITLE: “Candy”

RATING: R (drug use, foul mouths and nudity)

CREDITS: Directed by Neil Armfield. Screenplay by Mr. Armfield and Luke Davies based on a book by the latter.

RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes

WEB SITE: www.thinkfilmcompany.com

MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS