Candy

Candy (2006) is Neil Armfield's Australian drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Dan, a sometime poet, falls for art student Candy, and she dives straight into his bohemian world — heroin and all. At first it plays like a honeymoon that never has to end.

The film splits into three acts named Heaven, Earth and Hell, and the titles tell you exactly where this love is heading. As the money runs dry, the couple does whatever it takes: Candy sells herself, Dan looks away, and their one grown-up friend, a chemistry-teacher addict named Casper played by Geoffrey Rush, keeps the supply coming until his own footing slips. Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish don't play cautionary-tale junkies; they play two people genuinely in love and slowly going under.

Armfield adapted Luke Davies' autobiographical novel, with Davies co-writing, and the result neither preaches nor glamorizes — it just charts, honestly, how addiction hollows out a feeling from the inside. It's a hard watch, made harder by how we remember Ledger now. If you can take a love story with no comfort in it, this holds career-best work from both leads. Stream Candy (2006) online on iFILM.