As a warning to any moaning fannies, this contains one very
minor spoiler.
My sixteenth birthday brought with it a moment of depression: the
world no longer considered me a child, which meant that I could no longer
become a victim of paedophilia. Don't get me wrong- I'm not saying that I
wanted to be abused, it's just that now any sexual assault I might suffer would
seem a little more run of the mill. I mean sure, if I was raped at this age, my
attacker would go to prison but how is that a punishment? All that's happened
here is that he's been locked up in a small building with other men who are
forced to shower together. Now, I'm no gay-rapist but surely to be caged in
with a buffet of free cock isn't the worst thing in the world for him? I don't
want to be one of those idiots who claims prison is like a holiday camp because
of course, that's just not true. With the constant threat of being shivved for
a box of cigarettes, it's actually much closer to spending the night in a
Manchester Travelodge. However if I had
to be abused, I used to feel much better knowing that my attacker would instead
be hunted down by a pissed up mob of bald men and idiots. It's not that I don't
trust the justice system rather that I'd more quickly achieve a sense of
closure if I was instead presented with his torn off bollocks whilst his house
burnt down.
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| Kiss my fucking ring! |
Of course, by now, a grim amount of time has passed since my
sixteenth birthday. Currently I've been existing for around twenty-four
uneventful years and I've thankfully, so far, avoided a brutal, back-alley
bumming. The reason I mention all this is simply because I recently re-watched
the pedo-tastic, chop-em-up Hard Candy. Not to sound like I've got a
complex, but I think there are two main reasons that I luckily managed to avoid
being molested as a child and neither of them are related to my looks. Firstly
I was raised in a fairly un-religious environment meaning that I never had to
spend time in the pedo-headquarters of the Catholic Church. Secondly I grew up
for the most part without access to the internet or chat-rooms. Back in the
days of dial-up modems, if somebody had wanted to assault me, they'd have had
to arrange with my Mum for her to be off the phone during peak grooming hours. Despite its name sounding like a description of what priests might
use to lure choirboys home with, it is actually the latter of these two things
that Hard Candy focuses on.
The great thing about Hard Candy is in not knowing what
will happen next and so I won't spoil anything that isn't mentioned in trailers
or DVD plot descriptions, although if you're reading a blog about a film you've
never seen then you really are taking a chance. The film begins by depicting an
online conversation between Ellen Page- a fourteen year old girl, and Patrick
Wilson, an inappropriately older man. They arrange to meet up for coffee and
quickly end up back at his place for alcoholic drinks and a photo shoot. Of
course we now live in a paranoid world of exaggerated fear where an innocent
situation like that might be vilified by do-gooders jumping to conclusions.
Just because an adult takes a child back to his home to get drunk and take
saucy pictures of her, does that make him a paedophile? Well- probably, yes.
However this film isn't just the Jimmy Saville biopic that it's starting to
sound like. Fairly quickly we discover that Page might not be as innocent as
she looks, as she begins to take revenge on him for the crimes that she
believes Wilson has committed in the past. Regardless of how good this film may
be, it's worrying to see what is basically propaganda for a trial that relies
less on a jury and more on woman's intuition.
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| It's always the quiet ones... |
I say that last point because the genius of the film is in the
way that it remains mostly ambiguous as to what exactly is going on. Although
I'm pretty sure the end confirmed whether or not Wilson was a kiddie fiddler, a
friend who watched it with me seemed to disagree. Although on principal I do
always consider myself correct, I think that Hard Candy does leave just
enough room for you to make up your own mind. At the end of the day, we as
viewers never actually see any evidence either way and although Wilson doesn't
look like a pedo technically, it's not like they have a uniform- although if
they did, it would definitely by a tacky tracksuit with shit loads of grandpa-bling
and a pocket for the OBE.
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| Sure, your kids will be safe with me! |
In terms of subverting expectations, the young girl is
introduced to us wearing clothes that are essentially bought from Victims-R-Us.
As is prominently shown on the posters and DVD’s Page has been clothed to look
like a modern day version of Little Red Riding Hood. The difference being that
in the original fairytale, the young girl finds herself to be the victim of a
wolf whereas here it's the other way around. Where once Red Riding Hood said,
“And what big teeth you have”, she now
simply looks at his cock and says, “I have to admit that you are
built”. That's before the second half of the film then becomes a prolonged
version of Takashi Miike's violent rom-com Audition, however here, the violence, like
everything else in this film, happens mostly off screen. Considering how gory
some of these sequences could have been, the focus is less on the act of
violence and more the suffering that it causes. As a word of advice - any men
or women with a proud set of testicles will definitely find Hard Candy tough
to watch in parts.
Evidence of this movie’s brilliance is in just how simple and
stripped down the whole thing is. There's like two actors in the whole film and
it mostly takes place in the one room. I've seen things with that basic set-up
before but they're usually only five minutes long and embedded onto
Youporn.com. The fact that this one holds the audience’s attention for over
ninety minutes is a credit to the direction and writing. For anybody sick of
misogynistic slasher films that depict woman as bimbo cascaras to gawp and stab
at, Hard Candy is a welcome alternative. It's as though this film was
made solely as a 'fuck you' to any of the dipshits that laughed during the God
awful Scary Movie when the woman got stabbed in the tits.
Despite how knowing and satirical that the script is though, it
could very easily have fallen apart if not for the control that Page and Wilson
display. After this film, Page went on to become the most pregnantest girl ever
in Juno, and Wilson became the impotent fat Batman in the underrated Watchmen.
I also feel I should add that I think I'm a big fan of Patrick Wilson just
because of how physically he's reminds me of a Hollywood remake of the British
actor David Morrissey. Sort of like how Paris Hilton is the American remake of
what we Brits would refer to as a boozed up slag.
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| Wish that mummy would ressurrect my career... |
This was Director David Slade's first feature film, having graduated
from music videos and adverts. After this he went on to helm 30 Days of
Night before blemishing his CV with the third film in the Twishite
saga. In his defence, that is apparently the best of the franchise but that's
not saying too much is it? I mean I'm sure that Tom Cruise's poo would sell for
a lot more on ebay than Brendan Fraser's but at the end of the day you're still
only left with a load of shit. Some people have complained that his visuals on Hard
Candy are distractingly ‘MTV’ at times but in a defence of that some people
are also idiots. Slade's use of colour is nothing but brilliant using blues and
pastel shades to expertly match the on screen emotion taking place- when the
camera pans past a blood red wall, the chances are you're about to find out
exactly why the working title for this was “Snip Snip”.
In the end, Hard Candy is a brilliant little thriller
that tackles difficult subjects with, well- balls. I mean, fucking hell, if
I've not ruined the centre piece of the film for you by now then
congratulations- you're officially an idiot. I'm pretty sure that the whole
testicle-scene is common knowledge anyway and if not, there's still so much
more to enjoy and discover. Oh, sod it- I'll stick a minor spoiler alert thing
at the top so nobody can moan at me. Anyway, for anybody that either hates
pedophiles or loves good films then I strongly recommend watching this. If
neither of those two statements apply to you, then I suggest it's time you ask
yourself a few fairly strong questions after a good hard stare in the mirror.
For fans of thrillers who aren't either on some sort of register or a priest whose
‘gotten away with it’ then check or re-check this out now.
Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.
