Candy is a film for those who like their tragedy neatly boxed within a celebrity styled sense of being the victim of drugs with a large slice of self importance. However, after two rambling hours of celluloid and needles it’s hard to feel that much sympathy.

The two main characters are almost as likable as Jennifer and Oliver from Arthur Hiller’s Love Story in such a way that when you’ve spend two hours suffering their self consumed lives you feel like you would rather have spent the time listening to Popeye Doyle telling stories to Inspector Henri Barthélémy in some grubby police cell in Marseilles. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Australian cinema, especially the much maligned Bad Boy Bubby, but the director is so desperate to present a sense of romantic tragedy that even Candy’s pretentious “artist” rantings whilst scrawling on the table with a few crayons or waving her clentched fist at her parents in a resentful “look what you made me do to escape my reasonably middle class life” fashion failed to keep me amused for long before I returned to my realisation that these are the kinds of things that make me dislike this film.

In conclusion – Candy probably does create an insight into the nature of human desperation but ultimately, I like my tragedy inflicted not self-inflicted.

So, you were asking me about Bad Boy Bubby?…oh, you weren’t.