hard to swallow

Last night I watched Hard Candy (2005). I remember when it came out, I thought: "How can they sustain a whole movie about a young photographer trying to romance a teenage girl, after having met her online? Won't this make people upset?" The filmmakers knew this, so, yeah, of course it's about pedophilia and child pornography. You should know by now that it is also a psychological thriller/character study because the girl Hayley (Ellen Page) ties up the photographer Jeff (Patrick Wilson) and then tortures him. She's stalked him, she's figured out he's had something to do with the disappearance and murder of another teenage girl, so she's meticulously planned how to make him pay.

This may spoil things for you, but her plan is to castrate him. And she does. Until you find out she hasn't. It's very subtle and if you turn away, you can miss it, but once he gets free after the alleged castration was supposed to have happened, he says, "I'm all here." Before trying to find her, to hurt her (in self defense, I would say), he turns on the tape because Hayley supposedly filmed the procedure. But of course it's not there and instead it's a cartoon or some other kiddie program. However, how do the filmmakers explain the footage we could see of the surgery when we, like Jeff, thought she was really carrying it out?

I only came to this realization once the film was over. I honestly wasn't sure if she had castrated him or not--the revelatory truth so quickly given. But here's my thinking: Hayley forces Jeff to commit suicide so that his big secret isn't revealed (especially to this former girlfriend he's still infatuated with), so that he doesn't go to jail, etc. She fixed the suicide, the confession to that teenager's murder, and everything, and she promises him that she will clean it up if he just kills himself. As he dangles on the side of his swanky house, she says, "Or not." So, Hayley has fixed it just so, so it looks like there wasn't another person there who tortured and prompted Jeff's suicide. Of course she couldn't have castrated him. Otherwise the cops would suspect foul play. This is not to say that an extremely upset or frustrated pedophile wouldn't ever chop off his own bollocks, but let's just say it's not likely, especially in Jeff's case. (Yeah, I find it ironic that Wilson was also in Little Children [2006] where a convicted child sex offender played by Jackie Earle Haley, Ronnie McGorvey, goes to this extreme on himself at the end.)

Now, there is something else I want to address in analyzing the film. It's definitely a psychological thriller. Based around torture. You would think that it would appeal to those who love to watch the Saw movies and the Hostel movies and those few who are eagerly awaiting that Captivity (2007). But unlike those films, the violence and torture are really not for the amusement of the audience, who wish to be scared or at least a little bit freaked out. Here, because so much of it happens just outside the frame, and all you get are the sounds and Hayley's confident talking (she could sell anything), she--and in turn, the film--plays with the audience's minds as much as she plays with Jeff. She convinced him she had castrated him! Which makes me wonder where she got those fake testicles she at least threatened to throw down the garbage disposal.

I made a joke earlier that this film should be shown to pedophiles. It would definitely scare them off if they could see how a young girl could mind fuck them and hurt them. In this way, it is very much a cautionary tale, no? That's where the torture is different from that of the Saw and Hostel franchises, for instance. Is there a lesson to be learned from Hostel? What? Never go to Eastern Europe? I don't think so. Hard Candy tries to be a social commentary about a serious problem, and I think it is, which is why I--like other people who have seen it--can toss around these ideas. Saw (2004) isn't a social commentary. Except we now know, after observing the success of these kinds of movies, that people love to watch people get tortured.

Having said this, however, I am not seriously suggesting that this film is commendable because it carries this message. It avoids bringing pedophiles (and child sex offenders, though Jeff had never been convicted and thus no one knew about it) the help they need. Hayley doesn't understand that her warped brand of "justice" is not justice. As a representative of the group that Jeff has long targeted for his fantasies, you may think she is justified, but I am sorry. No one deserves this kind of torture. And that's what makes the young parents of Little Children so disgusting; no, McGorvey should not be castrated. And even if Jeff had had something to do with the teenager's murder, then this really is not a case for Hayley to solve and "put right."

I still recommend it if I haven't put you off completely.