What Movies Have You Watched Recently?

[diebitter]

Hard Candy

I think this was in the cinemas last year. This is some film. It starts with us seeing the screens of two people talking on the internet, and arranging to meet up. It's a little sleazy seeing their private chat.

Then they meet up - it's a cool-looking dude (who turns out to be 32), and he's meeting a young girl of 14.....eeeeeeeeeeeeeh, that's enough to start you feeling a little out your comfort zone. They talk, he tells her how she looks much older than she is when she clearly doesn't, and she's flattered, and so the dialogue goes on like that... But they chat, they're cool, and he mentions he has a bootleg mp3 of a band she loves (and he knows she loves) and ever so subtly, she ends up going back to his house. They chat more, and you still feel out of your comfort zone, especially when you find out he's a photographer, and his walls have pictures of young models over them (but small, subtle photos).

He starts to photograph her, but looks queasy, and then yells for her to SIT DOWN. He then gets dizzy and passes out, and he wakes up tied up... She's accusing him of being a pedophile, and a long two-handed cat-and-mouse game starts between them.


Ahhhh, what a movie. Very uncomfortable viewing, but it was well-made, constructed somewhat more like a play than a film (virtually every scene is in his house, barring the coffee house meeting), and I'm glad I've seen it. All the time, you can't work out if she's really crazy or all the deductions she's making based on his job, his internet persona and the ambiguous evidence she finds that suggest he's done terrible things (but you can't be sure) is spot on.

Okay, parts are wholly unbelievable (there was never a 14 year old like this, I think), but it was compelling and gripping. I was guessing right till the end who the real monster was out of these two.

A very intense psychodrama, with two terrific performances by the two leads.