Reviewed - Hard Candy: THIS taut, claustrophobic thriller, in which a contemporary Little Red Riding Hood fights back, has, I would guess, been constructed with the intension of inspiring debate between punters and their dates. Hard Candy, which recent legal convulsions have rendered particularly relevant in this territory, sees a teenage girl binding up and torturing a potential sexual abuser. If the producers get their way, we will be bellowing at each other as we exit the cinema. Did he have it coming? What constitutes consent?
Young Ellen Page is strong, if a little showy, as a precocious high school student, who, after debating the merits of Zadie Smith with Patrick Wilson's sleek photographer in an internet chat room, lures the boob to a coffee shop. Later they make their way to his austerely attractive house and, after spitting out more than enough of Brian Nelson's stagy dialogue, she slips something sedative into his vodka.
In truth, the film is a little too hysterical and preposterous to provoke many questions worth answering. That said, I did find myself wondering whether if, like Wilson's character, I found myself tied to a table about to undergo castration without anaesthetic, I would be inclined to start telling my persecutor stories about my childhood. You'd have other things on your mind. Wouldn't you?
As in earlier quasi-feminist revenge dramas such as Audition and I Spit on Your Grave, the sociological musings are really just an excuse to embark on some agreeably grisly adventures in exploitation.
David Slade, a director of videos for such bands as the Stone Temple Pilots, certainly treats the material with a seriousness appropriate to Proper Art. Everything is grey or blue. Extreme close-ups are not uncommon. But the picture works best when the two antagonists - almost nobody else talks in the film - are hitting each over the head or cutting bits out of one another.
Andrea Dworkin as investigated by Itchy & Scratchy.
