Set in Sydney and chaptered into three sections -- "Heaven," "Earth" and "Hell" -- "Candy" is hardly coy about the sequence of misery facing a heroin addict and his junkie-girlfriend. No sooner has aspiring poet and ne'er-do-well Dan (Heath Ledger) introduced Candy (Abbie Cornish) to the needle than they cocoon themselves in a relationship of codependency, delusion and self-destruction. The outside world is a place they visit only to exploit for food or a new fix. Candy's family is good for free dinners, and chemistry professor Casper (a deft Geoffrey Rush), a part-time user himself, "lends" them money or treats them to his own illegal narcotic concoctions.

Inevitably, as their "Heaven" escalates into "Earth" and "Hell" at ever-increasing velocity, love -- their purest bond -- becomes an inevitable casualty.

The movie's intermingling of romance and addiction echoes better pictures such as "Drugstore Cowboy," but if director Neil Armfield and his co-writer, Luke Davies, reprise some well-worn chestnuts of this subgenre, they don't blunt the edginess with cautionary subtext. And they're smart enough to play to the film's obvious strength: The attractive spectacle of Ledger and Cornish makes their love seem as pure and intoxicating as the heroin they spike into their milk-white skin.

As Dan, Ledger seems perpetually zoned out, his eyes practically floating in ocular aspic. But he manages underneath that to broadcast an intense awareness -- the glint of the unblinking crocodile, the calculation of the user. Cornish provides a counterbalance for Ledger's authoritative presence, turning what could have been just another heroin movie into a flawed but engrossing parable on love and sacrifice.

-- Desson Thomson (Nov. 30, 2006)

Contains pervasive drug use, disturbing images, nudity, sexual scenes and profanity.