Candy (2006)
Directed by Neil Armfield
A poet falls in love with an art student, who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle — and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair.
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What critics compared Candy to
If this film lacks the iconic, culty verve of a "Trainspotting" or a "Midnight Cowboy," it is nonetheless a vivid, lyrical and fully convincing fable of innocence lost, or, if you prefer, willfully thrown away.
A withdrawal sequence is as painful as the one in Trainspotting but without its wink and comedic relief.
After Drugstore Cowboy and Trainspotting finally (and brilliantly) stripped away the poetic mythology around drug addiction, Candy once again revives it while simultaneously plunging us back into the cautionary moralism of Days of Wine and Roses.
"Candy" won't make anyone forget "Trainspotting" (1996) or "Requiem for a Dream" (2000), but nor will "Candy" let those who see it soon forget the experience.
The movie's intermingling of romance and addiction echoes better pictures such as "Drugstore Cowboy," "Leaving Las Vegas" and "Trainspotting."
(The let’s-detox-together scene almost rivals some of Trainspotting ’s stuff as an anti-drug warning.)
However, the screenplay (credited to the director and Luke Davies, the Oscar-nominated “Lion” screenwriter who wrote a novel based on his own addiction, “Candy”) injects some structural trickery to evoke the challenges David faces in reckoning his warm relationship to his son during his childhood to the troubled creature now grappling to survive.
But screenwriters Luke Davies—a former heroin addict and author/co-screenwriter of Candy —and Van Groeningen take a largely matter-of-fact approach to the archetypes of the addict’s journey.
It is concerned with drug addiction after all, an aspect of life not known for its focus or drive – and screenplay adapter, Australian Luke Davies ( Lion ) should know, as his own biographic script for Candy illustrates.
Directed by Belgian Felix Van Groeningen, who co-wrote the screenplay with Australian Luke Davies ( Candy ; Lion ), the film has some poignant moments where the family rises above the crisis, but the piece is very long and overwhelmingly glum.
This narrative, co-written by Luke Davies who has tackled addiction previously in 2006’s Candy , is presented in a rather jarring fashion, with the film constantly flipping back and forth between past and present.
Credit:FRANCOIS DUHAMEL The film was co-written by Australian author Luke Davies, who presumably got the gig on the basis of his 1997 novel Candy , a semi-autobiographical account of heroin addiction that became a 2006 vehicle for Heath Ledger.
Lucidly adapted by Australian playwright/screenwriter, Luke Davies (Candy, Life), from the autobiography, A Long Way Home, by Saroo Brierley, Lion powerfully shows that being given a happy, comfortable new life doesn’t necessarily extinguish the memories of your previous, seemingly far less enriching, one.
Also deserving praise is writer Luke Davies (Candy, Life) who adapted Saroo Brierley’s autobiographical novel in creating the screenplay.