Hard Candy Review
by samseescinema (sammeriam AT comcast DOT net)April 28th, 2006
Hard Candy
reviewed by Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com
rating: 3 out of 4
Director: David Slade
Cast: Patrick Wilson, Ellen Page
Screenplay: Brian Nelson
MPAA Classification: R (disturbing violent and aberrant sexual content involving a teen, and for language)
Hard Candy is a film of precision. Every one of its pieces is precisely timed and executed. Even the credits, with a crisp red box sliding about an entirely white canvas, alert us to the precision Director David Slade intends to execute. The characters themselves are precise, manipulating each other and turning tables with every fade-to-black. They're smart and sly, equally insane and disturbed in their intentions. It's a revenge film of an exponential degree; involving a subject matter most writers shy away from. And Hard Candy doesn't hide its intentions. The film is cruel, sadistic, and vindictive; afraid entirely of nothing.
"A parent's worst nightmare" would be an easy way to describe Hard Candy's first segment. Fourteen year-old Hayley Stark (Ellen Page) chats with Lensman319 online, dishing out innuendo like soup at a shelter. They agree to meet, spurred by Hayley's curiosity and Lensman's encouragement. We cut to a decadently tender chocolate cake cut with a fork and slipped through the lips of Ms. Stark. Lensman319, now named Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson), walks up and sits beside her on a stool. They talk for a while, Hayley trying for maturity and Jeff going along with it. Hayley suggests they go back to his place so she can hear a bootleg recording of her favorite band. Again, Jeff doesn't deny and soon she's taking a tour of his home, which also exudes precision. Hayley's interested in his work as a photographer and asks if she can see his studio. Jeff takes her in, handing her a glass of water. "Actually," she says, "they tell us not to take drinks we haven't mixed ourselves." "Good idea," Jeff says immediately, helping her up to his kitchen. She takes orange juice from the refrigerator and finds some gin, mixing two cocktails. In the studio now, Hayley becomes increasingly interested in the young models Jeff has framed all over the house. She wants to be one of them, and asks if he would mind shooting some frames of her. She leaps upon the couch and starts dancing to some music, removing articles of clothing. Jeff begins to sway in dizziness and suddenly falls to the floor. Cut to black. We fade in to find Jeff bound to a chair by a mean plethora of rope. You see, Jeff should have been more careful with his own drink. Hayley drugged him, and now the tables have turned.
>From there, Hard Candy falls onto revenge film tracks, heightened expectantly by the pedophilic nature of the story. Put simply, Hard Candy is an indulgence in the rage we feel when the mug shot of a sex offender is plastered to our six o'clock news, his victims nestled in shadow around him. The film indulges so fully in this rage that we wonder sometimes of the sanity of our own hero, Hayley, whose cruelty seems to have no end. But the film is also hindered by its revenge tactics. The foundation is tied so fully to a revenge formula that besides the off-kilter twists at the end, we can predict each bend, rise, and swoop of its rollercoaster. There's also a stutter in that we don't, in fact, hate Jeff. We suspect his violent, disgusting nature, but since he never actually lays a hand on Hayley, we aren't granted the anger we need to indulge in the revenge as much as Screenwriter Brian Nelson asks us to. But this is a two-way criticism because to let Jeff hurt Hayley would insult Hayley's intelligence, something Nelson refuses to do. It's a dilemma that isn't easily avoided.
The actors put up nothing less than flooring performances. Patrick Wilson is completely convincing as a well-to-do man with a sharpened talent for manipulation. As his situation becomes more and more desperate, so too does his sanity. Playing Hayley, eighteen year-old Ellen Page has no problem playing fourteen. Her character is crisp and smart, but not without the flighty idiosyncrasies of an adolescent.
As a rookie feature-length director, David Slade is more than promising. His film is obsessed with intimacy, a theme that tickles the skin with creeps when dealing with such a topic. He'll pull in for the close-up instead of settle for the medium shot, characters are always on the extreme right or left of frame, colors come in starkly solid primaries. All that Slade executes is done with the utmost precision, done probably to let the visual themes of the film keep up with the precisely sly antics of the script. He'll rarely allow another character to show its face, opting instead to make it a tug-of-war power struggle between two sneakily disturbed dynamos. What he's done is create an instant cult classic. Not only will audiences fear and adore this film in theatres, but its shelf life as a DVD will be virtually endless. Like American Psycho and Fight Club before it, Hard Candy isn't just a volley of head games, but a viciously sadistic thriller with a dripping taste for revenge.
-www.samseescinema.com
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