Candy

Amour fou, indeed. This slightly over-familiar but neatly told story of a sexual/romantic passion at once partly fuelled and blighted by drug addiction focuses on an engaging young Australian couple: would-be poet Dan (Heath Ledger), and budding young artist Candy (Abbie Cornish), whom Dan introduces, a little reluctantly but with predictably terrible results, to heroin. That the stages in their relationship are portentously marked out in three chapter headings – Heaven, Earth and Hell  – points to a certain schematism in the narrative, though the initial lack of sermonising and the uniformly strong performances (Ledger is especially effective, while Noni Hazlehurst and Tony Martin provide sterling support as Candy’s understandably anxious parents) together manage to carry the day. Armfield’s confident direction alternates between expressive and just a little too flashy, but is overall sufficiently fresh and imaginative for even the darker scenes of embittered break-up to avoid being as dramatically tiresome as they usually are in such fare.