Reviewed by Imogen Neale

SOME MOVIES you go to see you can come home, after dinner, a few drinks, a little hit of espresso perhaps, and pen a fairly comprehensive and satisfying review that you feel, cleanly surmises all you thought and felt about that movie. Some movies you can not. The reasons differ; perhaps it annoyed you, perhaps you thought the ending was a self-conscious act of the world is all better again-ism. Perhaps it got you in that dark and daunting place some people quietly refer to as your soul...


I saw Candy two weeks ago and now, two weeks latter I feel like I can write the review.

Set in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, sometime just past or just present, Candy tags along on a heroin ride that belongs, predominantly, to would-be dashing Dan and potentially porcelain pure, Candy. Drifting around their early twenties, all summer skin and soft slips, we meet Candy just as she asks Dan to let her into his world; ‘I want to do it your way’ she lulls; ‘your way’ being a more direct, more addictive and more lethal way of getting heroin into the body. The needle squeamish will need to avert their eyes.

Dan, long time spoon roaster, reads her tender eagerness to be like him, to support him, to level the playing field, as endearing. And, after muffling one ‘no baby’ protest, he complies. More than that, he administers. And, as she slides into what will become very deep, and dirty, water, Dan’s candy confusion begins; his past and present white treat, taken daily, straight into the arm, the soul, the backs of his eyes where magic happens fuses with this new treat; an equally white, addictive daily treat that similarly, never says anything other than ‘more?’

The story is fairly predictable, any accurate drug story would be; it’s good, then really good, then bad, then really really, really bad. That’s a given.

The reason, however, Candy does have this ‘given’ element and still manages to triumph; content over context, is perhaps why it’s taken me so long to write this review.

The reasons is this; love, rather than drugs (complete with bad scores, prostitution, needles, cooking up scenes, OD’s and brilliant ‘yellow Jesus’ pontification courtesy of Geoffrey Rush) rule this story. Candy and Dan are both in love. For a long time they think it’s with each other, after awhile they’re not sure and then, by the time it probably matters, they’re so cooked, they don’t think to stop and wonder; how come I’m still with this person?

They just keep going; scoring, pimping, stealing, scoring and having long, but inconclusive, sexual sessions on bare mattresses and cold floors. Oh, and they also breed cats, but that’s in the book, not the movie.

At no time does choice – other than that they keep choosing to use – come into the picture. Which begs viewers (and readers) to a few questions; one of which I’m going to focus on specifically; how does choice happen?

I believe the happening of choice is a small thing; made in two seconds, perhaps received in three. Sometimes it’s stolen, sometimes it’s given. Sometimes it marches down Main Street and screams, ‘because I can!’ Sometimes it hides under the television and sobs, ‘because I can’t!’ Sometimes it is the air freewheeling around the words liberation, autonomy and self belief. Sometimes it’s the leather mask vacuum sealed onto the face of constraint that has crude little metal zips that unlock the stench of hate, subjugation and degradation. What ever it is, and it is all of those things, it is always there.

So, when Candy says ‘I want to do it your way’ she makes one simple choice; to try heroin intravenously. However, she simultaneously ushers in a raft of other choice possibilities (will I do it again, will I do it this way, will I do it with him), as does Dan when he complies and gives the drugs to her, his way. Then he is the one making one simple choice; I’m choosing to make this okay – okay to me, okay to her, okay to us. Then, when they choose to do it again, together, they are making yet another choice; this is how we will know each other, this is what we have in common, this is what our love will be; heroin. We choose heroin.

And that would be okay, if it was candy, the real, 50c bag lolly mix kind of candy. But it’s not and the problem is, that together, they can only choose the fake type.