Film Reviews

Hard Candy

• Rating:
• Director: David Slade
• Starring: Ellen Page
• Details: US, 103mins, 18.

"Jeff, did you know that castration is the easiest operation to perform?" Naive 14-year-old Hayley Stark (Page) is lured into meeting 32-year-old photographer Jeff Kohlver (Wilson) after hooking up on an Internet chat room. Shooting the breeze over a cup of coffee and a slice of chocolate cake, Hayley suggests going back to Jeff's to hear a Goldfrapp mp3 that Jeff downloaded. Once there, they enjoy a couple of screwdrivers and Hayley asks if Jeff would like to take some pictures of her. He agrees but before he can, he faints and falls unconscious. Waking up some time later, Jeff finds himself tied to a chair and Hayley berating him for being a paedophile. Slowly Jeff realises he was set up and protests his innocence but Hayley is having none of it and produces the scalpel…
Hard Candy is an example of how great dialogue can be the driving force and can make a movie travel faster than any MTV snappy editing could. Slade opts for close-ups instead of wide shots and this tight framing allows the audience to get in under the skin of the actors and see the beads of sweat dripping from Wilson's face and to peek into the horror in his eyes. His ambiguous approach to Hayley's motivation is another standout as we are constantly guessing if she is insane or doing the right thing. Hard Candy uses only five actors in the whole film (three of which make up about two minutes screen time) and, like Roman Polanski's Death And The Maiden, most of the action takes place in one house; in fact, Polanski even gets a mention in the dialogue: "Didn't Roman Polanski just win an Oscar?" the subtext being the Chinatown director's own shameful exploits with an underage girl and his future arrest if he sets foot on American soil again. This film is engaging, horrific, beautifully crafted, faultlessly acted and was on for a five star rating right up until the final, silly twenty minutes where Slade and his writer Brian Nelson lose the plot somewhat. Still though, a brave effort

Review by Gavin Burke