02.04.2008

That'll teach him

Dean Jacques reviews director David Slade's 'Hard candy' (DVD, �17.99)

I just got around to watching this film, which was first released way back in 2005, but came out on DVD in September 2007. Made on a shoestring budget of less than $1 million, it features in effect only two characters. It won much acclaim and three awards at the 2005 Sitges film festival, plus the Audience award for best feature film and best film, while Brian Nelson, the writer, won best screenplay. Despite all this it only netted $6 million at the box office.

Personally, I am not convinced. In fact I am deeply suspicious of this film, which is really a kind of ‘public information lecture’, or health warning, on the dangers of middle-aged men acting on their attraction to younger girls. Along with the gruesome scenes of torture and abuse (by the girl, Hayley, on the older man, Jeff) comes non-stop propaganda about the dangers of what the film calls “paedophiles”. We have the lot in this poor bastard - tied to the kitchen table and about to have his balls cut off.

Even though Jeff (Patrick Wilson) is a wealthy, successful fashion photographer, who lives in a swish modern mansion, drives an expensive car and has a string of dolly female young models, he still cruises the internet looking for under-age (the age of consent in the USA is 18) girls who he can get to know, and presumably have sex with. There is no suggestion that this bloke has any difficulty impressing teeny-boppers and they probably come along quite willingly, but Hayley (Ellen Page), who is seemingly lured back to his place, finds a stash of sexual photos of girls. Implicit in this is that they must have been tricked, conned, drugged or drunk to let themselves be photographed. But this is not enough. We then get led to believe that ‘the paedophile’ intends to murder Hayley, and has murdered one of her friends already.

However, the tables are turned, as Hayley, the innocent victim, emerges as a vigilante who is out to entrap him. She drugs him, tortures him, forces him to admit he was an accessory to murder and then hang himself. That’ll teach him.

The moral righteous movement in the USA - and Britain, of course - are highly delighted with the film and doubtless it has acted as vindication for real vigilantes on real estates. The film inspired an internet safety movement called Wear Red, which uses the red hood that Hayley wears as its symbol. Teenage girls are warned about being entrapped and ensnared by men they meet on the net.

It seems that ‘paedophiles’ are (mainly) middle-aged men who want sex with under-age girls. That in the US context can mean 16 or 17-year-olds - for whom sexual relations are perfectly legal in Britain and most parts of the world. Actually a paedophile is a person attracted to a pre-pubescent child, so the film tries to square this circle by having Hayley say she is barely through her first period. At 14? Then it links attraction to pubescent girls (Hayley thinks the term ‘girls’ is an excuse to cover the fact they are actually just children) to abuse (which by definition is any sexual act, including the consensual) and murder. So bad enough a middle-aged bloke wants to get into your pubescent knickers - he intends to murder you too.

Did the film have any saving graces? Well, yes, it worked. I started off fancying Hayley at the start of the film. Ten minutes later, stretched out on the kitchen table with the prospect of having my balls cut off with a pair of nail clippers, I’d gone right off her.

I’ll never look at St Trinians in the same way again.