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Hard
Candy: More Like a Jawbreaker Hard Candy isn’t an easy film. It makes the viewer squirm and writhe and, if they’re especially demonstrative, gasp. However, its strength is that it makes you squirm in about five different ways, making you uneasy over and over as the truth of the story changes. Hayley and Jeff meet online and arrange to get together at a nearby restaurant. It sounds innocuous enough, at least when viewed through the flirtatious instant message conversation in which we first encounter them. The reality is somewhat different—when we see them, they look more like they should be meeting for a student-teacher conference than for a date. Hayley is 14 years old, and probably the smallest, most elfin-looking 14-year-old on earth. Jeff is a 32-year-old fashion photographer whose models are often not much older than Hayley. He’s aghast when she suggests that he might be anything less than strictly professional with the often-underage models, but his righteous defense falls a little flat as he tries to explain himself to the cute little teenager drinking vodka in his living room. It’s sketchy at best, although Jeff tries, bogglingly, to come across as a nice guy with purely good intentions. He tries to be self-effacing and jovial, anything to distance himself from his position as predator. However, when Hayley drugs his drink and he wakes up tied to a chair, their roles are neatly reversed, and Hayley has no such qualms about being in the position of power. Her tormenting isn’t about physically hurting him so much as making him acknowledge what he is, the part of him he’s so successfully compartmentalized. Over the next hour, Hayley carries out her version of justice. Her ideas are some that I’m sure most people have had when they think of adults who prey on kids, exploiting children for their own one-sided pleasure. However, seeing her toy with him, keeping him completely helpless and ignorant as to what she’s going to do next, makes you question those vivid, horrible thoughts that arise whenever you hear about a child or a teen disappearances on the news—being led away from their parents and their lives, to never be seen again or at least never be the same. It’s impossible to be fully on Jeff’s side in the matter, especially once he begins to admit what he is and what he does, but it’s not easy to root for Hayley and her crusade either. As Hayley, Ellen Page, who will soon be seen as Kitty Pryde in the next X-Men movie, is perfectly believable as both the innocent, giggling child who acts as pervert bait and as the avenging lioness who makes Jeff regret every unfortunate impulse he’s ever indulged. Patrick Wilson, probably most recognizable for his work in Angels in America and Phantom of the Opera, does a remarkable thing in making his deviant character both condemnable and sympathetic. Working together with their two-faced roles, the actors bring to life a difficult story that gives the viewer no quick conclusions. Both are right and both are wrong and the film does the great act of giving the audience fodder for a long deliberation about justice, revenge, and culpability without suggesting how you should feel when the credits start. Bottom line: Hard, but worth the effort. |
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Dropouts
Step Out: Take the Lead Liz Friedlander’s Take the Lead is the latest in a long line of genre movies, one that began small with Blackboard Jungle, went big time with To Sir, With Love, and just keeps on going. Big or small screen, the premise is always the same. No-nonsense, idealistic teacher goes to tough school, reaches unreachable kids through unconventional methods. Those methods have included music, sports, chess, and theater. Here it’s ballroom dancing. Antonio Banderas plays Pierre Dulaine (he reconciles the French name and the Spanish accent early on), a New York ballroom dance instructor with his own school. Dulaine deftly prepares his clientele of mostly white upper class kids for cotillions and posh dance competitions. A chance encounter with street vandalism leads him to the aforementioned tough school, a mostly black and Hispanic high school in a depressed neighborhood. Cutting through a lot of red tape—this is Zorro, remember—Dulaine persuades a steely-eyed principal, played by Alfre Woodard, to let him teach ballroom dancing to a pack of “rejects,” doing eternal detention in a basement room. In short order, Dulaine has charmed the kids, converted the dreary basement into a hip-hop Rainbow Room, and pumped them to the gills with inward and outward respect. That’s the message of Take the Lead. Respect is the silver bullet, and if dancing instills respect, then let’s teach dancing. It makes sense, at least in the context of the movie. It doesn’t hurt that Dulaine dresses elegantly, stands and opens doors for ladies, and moves like Fred Astaire. And, of course, he looks just like Antonio Banderas. One could dismiss Take the Lead as the same old same old. It has many clichÈs—Gershwin/Porter tunes clashing with rap and urban dance mixes, Old World manners versus blunt street crudeness. The kids all have issues - body issues, home life issues, and parental expectation issues. And at the end, of course, is the Big Dance Contest. But that’s the point. Genre films become genre films because people like them so much that Hollywood keeps turning them out to the point where they become, well, genre films. Take the Lead can be enjoyed as exemplary of its kind. Banderas can’t help but charm, whatever he does. The “lost” kids, notably Rob Brown, Yaya DaCosta, and Lauren Collins, are funny and personable, though about as genuinely menacing as a pack of Chihuahuas. And, without a hint of computer-generated imaging, they are all great little dancers. Which, of course, is what we all came to see. Yards of dance footage. Lots of Cinderella transformation and growing self-awareness. Never mind that the script is full of cliches and faux-portentous dialogue. In the mouths of good actors, this stuff comes across. Skeptical? Read out loud the screenplay to a favorite movie, say, Gone with the Wind, some time. Yeah. Vivian Leigh didn’t get that Oscar for nothing, did she? Bottom Line: That’s all there is, so let’s keep dancing. |
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