Some things I liked some I did not.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This movie is one of the best I've ever seen! It's such a sad,complete full,astonishing film.But I wonder why the hell almost NOBODY was advertising this film?!? I am mad! The whole suicide thing was in the first plan,and the PR of this film WAS Awkward! better said,there were even A PR ! Why?! This movie,is in the same genre where Trainspotting is. But in this one there's more drama and love. Now I am trying to buy the original book,which the movie was made of. Yea...people,don't tell me that you did not knew this? Like always....the book is more detailed and better,so I can't wait to read the book! When I read the book Perfume,and just saw the trailer...ONLY the trailer I was mad because so many things were changed...so that I did not even had the mood to watch a stupid movie,based on a GREAT novel!

After his Oscar-nominated performance in Brokeback Mountain and before his posthumous Oscar win for The Dark Knight, the late Heath Ledger turned in another award-worthy performance in Candy, a searing and intense 2006 drama that was the most harrowing look at the horror of drug addiction since Requiem for a Dream.This is the story of Dan (Ledger), a talented poet who is doing nothing with his gift and Candy (Abbie Cornish), a struggling artist who has also put her talent on the back burner due to her relationship with Dan and their addiction to heroine and how it has completely dominated their lives. All of the questions related to addiction are addressed here in an in-your-face manner that is quite disturbing. Not only do we get to see Candy prostitute herself in order to support t heir habit, but we also see Candy challenge Dan to do the same. It's aggravating as we watch the hypocritical Dan get high with money that Candy earned on her back but he's unwilling to do the same. There is one surprisingly clever vignette where Dan happens upon a wallet on the front seat of a car and when it contains no cash, goes through an extremely elaborate ruse in order to extract the information he needs from the owner in order to use the credit cards that were in the wallet. As clever as Dan is here, it is also a little pathetic because you find yourself wishing that he could be this resourceful doing something positive or productive.What is so riveting about Dan and Candy's story is that we can tell from the beginning of the film that their relationship is doomed, but it doesn't keep the viewer from becoming completely enveloped in their story. We watch as they actually marry (the camera smartly pans the guests during the vows and the various reactions are telling) and watch the intensely mixed emotions from Candy's parents when Candy announces that she is pregnant. Her father's reaction to the new is just gut-wrenching. It's sad watching how Candy's parents can see that Candy's relationship with Dan is beginning to destroy their lives, but hold their tongues so long that when they finally confront the truth, it's too late.The most telling and most pathetic aspect of Dan and Candy's story is their constant talk about changing their lives and their half- hearted attempts to stop using so that they can. The scenes of Dan and Candy trying to quit cold-turkey, documented in days, is not an easy watch, but a realistic depiction of the physical effects of heroine and how the body craves it like medicine. Director Neil Armfield does not shy away from these scenes and the camera-work from above their bed is extremely effective.Ledger delivers a brilliant and intensely unhinged performance as Dan, which includes a credible British accent. Ledger pulls out all the stops here, making Dan a dangerous combination of smart and sexy and pathetic. Abbie Cornish is blistering and explosive as Candy, the addict who wants to blame Dan and anything else she can think of for what she's going through, in deep denial about the depth of her own addiction. Geoffrey Rush does a small but flashy turn as Dan and Candy's friend/dealer/enabler, whose willingness to help Dan and Candy feed their addiction seems to be stemmed in his sexual attraction to Dan.This is a bold and uncompromising look at drug addiction that pulls no punches and offers no easy answers, but is riveting entertainment for those who are game, thanks to evocative direction and brilliant performances from the stars.

There are many things to admire about this film - the extent of the effect of drug taking that the film goes into (like the miscarriage)- and Heath Ledgers performance; but there's a lot that just doesn't add up or go as well as it should have. Things that concerned me were: Abby Cornish gave a good performance but she spent almost the whole film looking like a gorgeous movie star, not a heroin addicted prostitute. People on heroin pay for it terribly in their physical and mental state and the physical side of it just wasn't captured properly in it. Where were the lesions, the weight loss, the teeth loss - the scabs? There was way too much "Portrait of the Drug Addicts as Beautiful Young Artistes" instead of lost disaffected drug addicted youth. ie too much celebrating their beauty and love rather than a more distanced objective framing of it - especially at the start of the film Ledger was charming and beautifully in the moment in his acting - but his charactersation was all over the place at times - from bumbling hopeless druggy to confident actor in a robbery to hard working brickies labourer -- all of these things are possible in the one character but we don't feel him grow and naturally change to them - it just felt like poor and jarring scripting and directing I felt the voice overs removed me from the action and a closeness to the characters and also created a few narrative jumps - I didn't feel like I was sitting as close to the characters on their journey as I felt I should have A few specific things - Dan's reaction to Candy first prostituting herself was neither one way or the other - something that strong required a strong reaction (after all we're continually told how much they love each other) - but if he wasn't too fussed about it - and if he's like that because of the drugs then we need to see that he is completely done over and desperate for the drugs, which he didn't seem When Candy sits up and tells the real estate agent 'we're drug addicts things are complicated' (or something like that) I didn't buy a word of it ~ she simply wasn't effected enough by her situation to make the words believable Rush was a bit stagey at times too It makes some good points and has some lovely acting in it at times - especially the last scene with Ledger and Cornish - but for me some of it jarred a bit - they just needed to put the boot in a bit more and stop celebrating them and start showing and feeling it more! Perhaps the degree to which they indulged or celebrated the characters prevented Armfield from looking in full detail at all of the scenes - for instance when Dan steals the wallet he doesn't know what the owner will look like - but when he first sees the drivers license and shows it to Rush and asks if he looks like him there's no sense of this being a new thought - it's as if he knows he can pull off the robbery by looking like him before he realises he looks like him! Some narrative advances appeared to come from the writer not the character - the way the robbery is pulled off is highly unrealistic (to the point of almost being comical for all the wrong reasons) - and you get the feeling it happened because the writer wanted him to have a lot of money not because it was a realistic situation faced by the character in his realistic world.

I've seen this movie a few times now over the years, and each time it grows on me more and more. It joins the other few films of it's sort; Requiem for a Dream, Trainspotting, etc. Movies that treat drug addiction in a real sense are few and far between. The difference between these films and others is that the character's show the true desperation of such addictions.This is one of those movies that rely's heavily on it's performance's and in that respect Heath Ledger is amazing. The raw feeling that he brings to his character shows that he really was one of the best actors of his generation. Looking at the difference's is the roles he played from William Thatcher in "A Knight's Tale" and Sonny Grotowski in "Monster's Ball". Geoffrey Rush, who is one of my favorite actors, gives another of his famous performances that he makes his own. Hint to all the reader's out there if you see a role and can't imagine anyone else in that role, then that actor or actress has done there job perfectly.This sort of movie requires very little description here. It's about a couple and their friends that have an addiction to heroin. The dialogue that is given to describe such acts is almost pitch perfect for what it should be. Watching the quick view at the top and the slow but steady drop in despair is how these movies usually go. So sometimes it's no surprise what happens but in the way in happens is the real achievement in this film. When a film shows such depravity sometimes it disturbs me and it is no different here. However the difference here is that I actually had empathy for the character's on the screen.