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When the first of three segments in a film about drug addicts is titled “Heaven,” you have a pretty good idea where it’s headed. Adapted from poet Luke Davies’s novel by Neil Armfield (The Castanet Club), it relates the downward track of Dan (Heath Ledger), an alleged poet whose only writing is in a crossword puzzle, and the title ingénue (A Good Year’s Abbie Cornish, uncannily resembling a younger Nicole Kidman), an art student who rarely uses her paints except to try to pawn them. Their creative vocations, it seems, come second to their real passion — for each other, for the ecstasy of the moment, for heroin. Dan’s blissful, self-deluding voiceovers are contradicted by the harsh realities of petty crime, disapproving parents, and prostitution — a warning, it would seem, that self-indulgent and self-destructive behavior is bad for you. Candy offers opportunities for the cast to indulge in histrionics — going cold turkey, going mad — but little insight into the Heaven they seek and lose.
On the Web
Candy's Web site's://www.dendyfilms.com.au/candy/
