KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: 4/5
Warning: spoilers ahead. Rule number one of film reviewing is that you don't give away the ending. But with this knuckle-whitening, creepily brilliant and hideously amoral thriller, it's important not to give away the beginning or the middle as well. The trailer is conscientiously non-specific about the storyline and the film has a much greater impact if you know nothing of what's coming. The problem is that any assessment involves spilling some of the beans.
This review won't spoil everything, but it does give away a key plot point. So you may want to count the stars, check the censor's rating and stop reading now.
A two-hander set mostly in one room, it's a high-impact psychosexual thriller that is at heart a pretty nasty piece of work. But it is so technically assured and driven by a preternaturally accomplished performance by the teenage Page that it is impossible not to cheer.
The actress, now 19 but 17 when the film was shot, plays Hayley Stark, a 14-year-old Lolita who hooks up in an internet chat room with 32-year-old fashion photographer Jeff Kohlvery (Wilson).
Any possibility that he may have mistaken his target evaporates when they meet in a cafe and she agrees to go home with him. In the cafe scene, one of the film's most riveting, Page is a revelation; her blend of gawky childishness and eerily seductive manipulation is perfectly controlled.
The trouble for Jeff is that her control is far more extensive than he realises. Back in his stylishly minimalist 70s house in the Hollywood Hills, he thinks he's snagged the ultimate jailbait but she has other ideas. Before he knows it, he's drugged and tied down and she's preparing - with shaving razor, scalpel and anaesthetising bag of ice - to engage in what she calls "a little preventive maintenance".
Plunging headlong and none too circumspectly into the vexed area of paedophilia (Hayley, rightly or wrongly, has Jeff in the frame for another outrage), Hard Candy seems at first like an exploitation flick with a wonky feminist agenda. But slowly the tormentor becomes more loopy and her prey's protestations become more plausible. We begin to doubt.
What's not in doubt is that the movie gets its hooks in you early and never lets go. Several lapses in plausibility (the carrying capacity of Hayley's shoulder bag and the behaviour of a neighbour (Oh) are the most conspicuous) are not enough to install the comforting reminder that it is only a movie. It's a tough watch, harder for patrons with testicles than for the rest, perhaps, but tough in any case.
The idea underpinning the film should sustain a few post-movie arguments: what defines a paedophile? Or the age of consent? And if you disapprove of men having sex with underage girls, do you have any qualms about torture? Using scalpels?
In essence, I'm not sure that Hard Candy is much concerned with such subtleties and anyone who is may be flattering the movie. It is extraordinarily accomplished but finally pretty sick.
Cast: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, Sandra Oh
Director: David Slade
Running Time: 103 minutes
Rating: R18, contains sadistic cruelty
Screening: Rialto
Verdict: A white-knuckle psychosexual thriller which is a hard watch, undeniably brilliant but hideously amoral
