Hard Candy – A Bit Difficult to Swallow
There are movies that bore you. As images flicker across the screen, you find yourself glancing at your watch, shifting in your seat, thinking about where you will eat after the show. You’re counting the seconds til films end that you may be released back into the all consuming and important responsibilities of life. When an audience feels like this, a movie has really failed – failed to grip, failed to impress, failed to mold and change a life.
Hard Candy is far from boring. I was gripped. I was impressed. I was molded and changed. But I was still looking at my watch, waiting for the credits with bated breathe. It would seem that boredom is not the only route towards failure.
Directed by David Slade, Hard Candy is a story of vengeance and manipulation. After tossing suggestive comments back and forth online, thirty-something photographer, Jeff Kolhver (Patrick Wilson) meets up with a bumbling and giddy 14 year old Hayley Stark (Ellen Page) at Nighthawks Coffee Shop. The two dance around the inappropriate - she not so subtly flirting as only a 14 year old can do, he “long-sufferingly” putting up with a the advances of a child. As expected yet dreaded, Hayley ends up at Jeff’s house – a drink in hand, a mischievous glimmer in her eye. Really? Really? Are we going here?
Oh yes we are – but not quite in the way imagined. After a snippet of interaction that can only be described as a mating dance, Jeff finds himself drugged and tied to a chair. An unnervingly calm and collected Hayley sits before him, succinctly telling him that she knows he is a pedophile and plans on castrating him.
Patrick Wilson is excellent as predator turned prey Jeff Kolhver. Beautifully walking the line between innocence and guilt, he keeps us guessing. Is he a genuine and innocent man caught in the web of a mentally deranged girl or is he actually the pedophile she claims he is? His performance, simultaneously eliciting sympathy and aversion, roots the entire movie and gives Ellen Page a platform from which to soar.
And soar she does. Page exquisitely embodies each stage of the transforming Hayley – naïve and girlish in the café, tempting and intoxicating in an impromptu modeling striptease, calculating and cold when holding a scalpel and bag of ice. She controls Jeff, controls the screen and ultimately controls the movie with power, presence and unnerving talent.
The script stumbles at points, dragging on when it should be more direct, teasingly dangling progress in the face of its audience and then quickly snatching it away. The cinematography is absolutely phenomenal – colorful, minimal, aggressive, suggestive. Toe touch for you Jo Willems.
But despite the powerhouse performances, overall beauty of the film and general intrigue of a taboo plotline, the movie still falls apart for me. Why? Why with so much good to boast does it still not work? The answer is pretty simple - I hated both characters so much, hated the subject matter, hated the circumstances that I found myself trapped in that I didn’t care if the movie was impeccably well acted, that each shot was juicy with color, that scene composition was creative beyond words or that shot angles were hauntingly engrossing. My skin was crawling so much that all the beauty and skillful filmmaking didn’t matter – I wanted out, wanted to escape, wanted nothing to do with the film whatsoever.
I’ve never felt this way about a movie – ever. And that makes a judgment about whether it was “good” or “bad”, whether it “succeeds” or “fails” extremely difficult. In many ways, Hard Candy defies categorization . . . for while I would love to forget every moment I spent watching this movie, I know I won’t. I know impressions of color, overwhelming floods of emotion and powerful angles and shots have been stamped onto my conscious.
Am I happy about that? Yes and no. Does Hard Candy fail as a film? Yes and no. Do I want to watch Hard Candy again? Yes and no. Ultimately, Hard Candy is a bit difficult to swallow.
