Knowing when to say when
Movies
The heroin addiction film must be absolutely mouthwatering
to those who make movies; it’s a topic teeming with the downward spirals and
the phoenix-like redemptions that can fuel compelling drama. But for those who
watch movies, two deadly problems plague this overdone genre: depictions of
self-medication gone awry are no fun at all (Trainspotting being an obvious
exception), and it’s tough to elicit compassion for anyone cocky enough to
think that they’re immune to enslavement by drugs. Truthfully, the clichรฉs
recycled for nearly every junkie flick would be totally laughable if the subject
matter weren’t so tragic and real.
Candy, the latest formulaic portrait of the lows and really
lows of dope dependency, hails from Australia and could best be
described as the Down Under version of Darren Aronofsky’sRequiem for a Dream, minus Requiem‘s stylish commitment to filth
and nihilism. Abbie Cornish (A Good Year) plays the title character, and as the film opens,
Candy is making the move from snorting smack to mainlining it like boyfriend
Dan (Heath Ledger, BrokebackMountain).
“I wasn’t trying to wreck Candy’s life; I was trying to make mine better,” Dan
tells us in wistful voiceover, but when languid days in bed and wild trips
through the car wash give way to screwing strangers for cash, it’s clear he’s
achieved the former rather than the latter.
What follows is the time-honored trajectory of debasement,
bitterness, and methadone, and Candy has nothing revelatory to say about any of it. Naturally, there are helpless
parents, possible salvation in the form of a pregnancy, and a flamboyant,
scene-stealing drug dealer (Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush) given to sage
observations like “When you can stop, you don’t want to. When you want to stop,
you can’t.” Candy is basically one of those indie opportunities
for the young, pretty, and critically acclaimed to turn in gritty performances
as young and still suspiciously pretty screw-ups.
He’s sporting his stringy 10 Things I Hate About You hair and his
eyes continue to be too close together, but the reluctantly charismatic Heath
Ledger is what makes Candy palatable.
Playing a desperate junkie without resorting to overacting is that rarest of
birds, and Ledger channels his hopelessness into quiet, whether he’s in a
narcotic fog, silently wrestling with his guilt over ruining the woman he
claims to love, or devising a plan to cop. Ledger traveled down the thorny
Hollywood path before pulling back for lovely performances in Monster’s Ball and Brokeback Mountain, and he’s simply too graceful to be a mainstream leading
man.
Less successful is Abbie Cornish,
whose shrill and aloof performance as the admittedly blameless Candy completely
undermines any sympathy we want to feel for her. She first gained stateside
attention in 2004’s irritating coming-of-age tale Somersault and will appear in next year’s The Golden Age, ShekharKapur’s sequel to Elizabeth which focuses on the relationship between The Virgin Queen (CateBlanchett reprises her Oscar-nominated role) and Sir
Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen). So with Blanchett, Owen,
Geoffrey Rush playing Sir Francis Walsingham again,
and Samantha Morton as Mary, Queen of Scots, Cornish will need to bring
something more to the table than a button nose and willingness to unclothe.
Look up the phrase “art house
film” in the dictionary and you’re likely to find Climates, the new movie
from award-winning Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan. It’s a leisurely meditation on both togetherness
and isolation told through the denouement of the relationship between
architecture professor Isa, played by Ceylan, and his younger girlfriend Bahar
(EbruCeylan, the
filmmaker’s wife). It’s not clear what led to the union’s demise, but the
distance between Isa and Bahar,
even when close together, confirms that it’s time to part. Isa
will fall back into the orbit of a former lover and then decide, through abject
selfishness or genuine regret, that he wants Bahar
back. But Bahar knows the difference, as do we. Isa might not.
Climates is a rather slight
piece, but anyone who has dealt with a breakup (i.e., everyone) will recognize
certain truths, especially the wordless introspection, which, unsurprisingly,
does not make for thrilling cinema. Fortunately, Climates is beautifully shot, the film opening at the sunny beach
and finishing in the snowy remotes, with a rough, funny, and cleverly filmed
sex scene between Isa and Serap,
his one-time mistress, squarely in the middle. Despite long stretches of
silence — no dialogue, no score — Ceylan, who
also wrote the film, recognizes that something’s going on even when nothing’s
happening.
Candy (R), directed by Neil Armfield,
and Climates (NR), directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan,
both open Friday, December 15, at Little Theatres.
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2006.
