Skip to content
Shared Darkness
A Communal Life in Film, Examined
Menu
About
Contact Us
Search for:
Hard Candy
April 14, 2006
Film Reviews
Brent
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Post navigation
←
Bukowski: Born Into This
The Notorious Bettie Page
→
 is a photographer in his early 30s. After striking up a<br />
chat-room relationship with young teenager Hayley Stark (an utterly<br />
fantastic Ellen Page), they meet at a local coffee shop. The checklist<br />
of phony seduction is fully satisfied — Jeff compliments Haley’s<br />
beyond-her-years intelligence, bonds over their shared musical taste,<br />
and buys her a token gift in the form of a T-shirt — and they soon<br />
repair to his house. There, <b>stilted and elliptical flirtation continues<br />
and the alcohol is brought out</b>. In a twist, though, it’s Hayley who<br />
spikes a drink. When Jeff comes to, he’s been tied up. In calm but<br />
calculated fashion, Hayley proceeds to explain her belief that Jeff is<br />
connected to the disappearance of another local girl. She first sets<br />
out on a quest to find child pornography in Jeff’s abode and, after a<br />
while, <b>reveals her plan to actually castrate him</b>. </p>
<p><b>Somewhat like <i>High Tension</i></b>, which took the stalking horror genre and wrapped it around a proto-feminist twist, <i>Hard Candy</i><br />
is similarly <b>a modern re-imagining of the cold-blooded vengeance pics<br />
of Charles Bronson’s heyday</b>. (Interestingly, neither of these two<br />
pictures are written or directed by women, which, to me, says as much<br />
about their overt commercial motivations as anything else.) Shot by Jo<br />
Willems (<i>London</i>) and constructed by Slade as a <b>veritable expo of primary colors and uncluttered sterility</b>, <i>Hard Candy</i><br />
is an excellent idea for a short film, and Slade has a great touch with<br />
the queasy-sleaze underpinnings that inform the movie. Still, <b>you can<br />
see the laboriousness of its construction and feel its wheels turning<br />
in its stretch to feature-length</b>. </p>
<p>Like <i>Saw</i>, <i>Hard Candy</i> takes delight in the macabre<br />
machinations of its “victims,” although here, of course, that word is<br />
further spring-loaded, and on the surface certainly more deserved. In<br />
alternating between the quippy and brusque, though, <b><i>Hard Candy</i><br />
never locates a satisfying, believable tone</b>. That the castration scene<br />
is prolonged to willfully torturous lengths could be forgiven (or<br />
indeed, embraced as being part of the point) were the film much more<br />
inspired in its interplay. Unfortunately, much of the natural tension<br />
it accrues over the first three-fifths of its running time dissipates<br />
via <b>a series of repetitive, merry-go-round exchanges between Hayley and<br />
Jeff</b>, and a nonsensical ending that just unravels wildly, bad-stock<br />
dialogue and everything. It’s here that you realize <b><i>Hard Candy</i><br />
doesn’t really have much to say</b>, and is in fact nothing more than <b>a<br />
rote, shrewdly packaged vengeance tale wrapped up in profundity’s<br />
clothing</b>. </p>
<p>To me, that’s almost a deal-breaker. <b>What recommends <i>Hard Candy</i>,<br />
though, is Page’s ferociously charged performance.</b> She holds the movie<br />
tightly and completely in her small hands. If it betrays her, she never<br />
betrays it. <b>(Lions Gate, R, 99 mins.)</b></p>
<div class=)