hoptis
Bluelight Crew
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Merging the articles I posted about this movie from the Movies about the Rec drug scene thread (hope no one minds!). More than happy for this movie to have it's own thread and looking forward to seeing it myself.
Little Fish last year was one of the best local films I had seen in a long time.
I found it pretty real and was also pleased to see a film which highlights the problems that heroin has caused in many urban communities in Australia, particularly in the Vietnamese communities of Sydney and Melbourne.
Most of all, it was really refreshing to watch an Australian movie that I felt I could relate to and reflected what I see as a fairly accurate depiction of life in urban Australia for some people. Whereas how many people can relate to Crocodile Dundee or Wolf Creek?
In that vein, here's an article on another upcoming local heroin drama, staring Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish (from One Perfect Day)
From Sydney Morning Herald
Little Fish last year was one of the best local films I had seen in a long time.
I found it pretty real and was also pleased to see a film which highlights the problems that heroin has caused in many urban communities in Australia, particularly in the Vietnamese communities of Sydney and Melbourne.
Most of all, it was really refreshing to watch an Australian movie that I felt I could relate to and reflected what I see as a fairly accurate depiction of life in urban Australia for some people. Whereas how many people can relate to Crocodile Dundee or Wolf Creek?
In that vein, here's an article on another upcoming local heroin drama, staring Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish (from One Perfect Day)
Sinking to the depths of pleasure
Pushing the limits … Candy (Abbie Cornish) and Dan (Heath Ledger) seek to stop time with the help of heroin.
By Andrew McCathie
February 15, 2006
Berlin Film Festival
THE horrors and destructive force of heroin are clear enough even to many of those addicted to the drug.
But in his first major feature film, the Australian director Neil Armfield seeks to explain the apparent pleasure and sense of escape that the drug can provide. He charts the relationship of Candy, a young painter, and Dan, an occasional poet, and the depths they find themselves sinking to as a result of their addiction.
Based on the best-selling novel by Luke Davies, Candy, starring the Oscar-nominated Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish, from the Australian movie Somersault, premieres today at the Berlin International Film Festival, one of the world's top three movie showcases. Speaking in Berlin, Armfield insists Candy is not necessarily a film about heroin, but a story about the yearning to escape the present.
"At the heart [of the film] is a fascination with the human desire to push any pleasurable experience absolutely to a kind of impossible point of continuation," he says.
Candy - the first Australian film to be entered in the Berlin festival's main competition for three years - is a story about the desire to make time stop, and how heroin can help to achieve this.
"It is a way of getting rid of the future and getting rid of the past," says Armfield. "It seems to be an addiction that the Western world is also going through now, which is an addiction to pleasure and to funding our desires well beyond what any of us, or the planet, can afford."
The film seeks to use the kind of silence that surrounds heroin addiction as a way of examining the dynamics of a middle-class Australian family, he says. The movie brings to the fore the reaction of Candy's parents to their daughter's plight.
Set largely in Sydney's inner west and also starring the Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush, Candy shows how the main characters' addiction appears to drive the family closer together, until Candy decides to check into a clinic.
Armfield has a formidable international reputation as a theatre and opera director. Even so, it is rare that a director could claim two major openings in less than a week. Armfield jetted into Berlin on Sunday for the screening of Candy after overseeing the opening on Saturday night of his Welsh National Opera production of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, in Cardiff.
The calibre of Candy's cast is also a major force behind the film. Basking in the success of Brokeback Mountain - for which he has the Oscar nomination - 26-year-old Ledger is one of the world's hottest male stars.
"His performance really holds the film together," says Armfield. Ledger read the script about three years ago and said that he was in.
Candy is one of 19 films competing at the festival, also known as the Berlinale, for the coveted Golden and Silver Bears. A large number of the entries explore the harder edge of modern life.
After a slow start to the 10-day festival, Candy will be screened as the battle for the Berlinale's top honours is starting to hot up.
It is a measure of the woes that have descended on the Australian film industry that it has been several years since an Australian movie was selected for the Berlinale's main competition.
But Armfield believes a series of recent Australian films, including Little Fish, Look Both Ways, and Three Dollars, could underscore a new self-confidence among local movie makers.
From Sydney Morning Herald
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