Hard Candy is a 2005 crime film^[3] focusing on the confrontation between an assumed sexual predator and a not-so-innocent 14-year-old girl.

The film, an independent production, was directed by David Slade, written by Brian Nelson, and stars Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page. It was the first feature film for Slade, who previously had worked mostly in music videos.

Plot[link]

The film opens with a flirtatious online chat between 14-year-old Hayley Stark (Ellen Page) and 32-year-old photographer Jeff Kohlver^[4] (Patrick Wilson) who agree to meet for the first time at a café. After further flirtation, Hayley suggests they return to Jeff’s house. Once there, Hayley makes them both screwdrivers after telling Jeff that she would not drink something that she did not mix herself. Hayley, who appears slightly intoxicated, suggests that Jeff take some photographs of her, similar to the ones of young girls displayed on the walls of his home. As Hayley dances and poses, Jeff begins to feel disoriented and eventually passes out.^[5]

Jeff wakes up tied to a wheeled computer chair. Hayley explains that she drugged him and has also been tracking him, knowing he is a pedophile. Jeff denies the allegations, saying he had innocent intentions. Hayley frantically searches the house, eventually finding a hidden safe in his rock garden containing a photo of Donna Mauer, a local girl who had been kidnapped and remains missing. Jeff denies involvement in Mauer’s disappearance and tries to escape. Hayley asphyxiates him with plastic wrap until he passes out again.

Jeff once again wakes, this time tied to a steel table with a bag of ice on his genitals. Hayley once again confronts him about Donna Mauer, informing Jeff that she is going to castrate him. After a long conversation, she begins composing an e-mail to Janelle, Jeff’s ex-girlfriend. Jeff attempts to dissuade her with threats, negotiation, and a long plea for sympathy based on a story of the abuse he suffered as a child, but Hayley proceeds with the operation. Following its conclusion, she steps out of the room claiming to leave to take a shower. Jeff breaks free and realizes she has faked the castration. Scalpel in hand, he follows Hayley to the bathroom, only to find that the shower is empty and he has walked into a trap; Hayley knocks him unconscious once again, this time with a stun gun.

Jeff awakens once more, this time standing on a chair, his hands bound, with a noose around his neck. Hayley reveals that she has written a fake suicide note on his behalf and she makes Jeff an offer. He can commit suicide, and Hayley will erase the evidence of his crimes. If he refuses to kill himself, Hayley will knock the chair out from under him and fully expose his secrets. Their conversation is interrupted when a neighbor (Sandra Oh) knocks on the door. Hayley answers and convinces the neighbor that she is Jeff’s niece who is staying for the weekend. When the neighbor asks her basic questions, Hayley stammers and tells unconvincing lies. When Hayley returns, Jeff breaks free from the noose and pursues her to the roof — where she has brought the noose and holds him off with the gun. Hayley reveals that she has contacted Janelle, who is driving to the house as they speak. She tells him that if he does not commit suicide, she will pull off her own clothes and run into Janelle’s arms, crying and screaming.

Jeff finally confesses that he was involved in Donna Mauer’s death, but that he only watched while his accomplice committed the murder. He promises that, if she spares his life, he will disclose the other man’s name and help her find him. Hayley reveals that “Aaron”, the man Jeff claims killed Mauer, told her the same thing before killing himself. Janelle arrives and Hayley urges Jeff to kill himself to avoid prosecution and prison, where he will be branded as a child molester and brutalized. She reminds him that her offer is still on the table. Jeff, defeated, lets Hayley slide the noose around his neck with no resistance. He takes the deadly step off the roof with Hayley promising “I’ll take care of it all…” Hayley looks over the side of the house, observing Jeff, and simply states: “…or not.” She gathers her belongings and escapes through the woods at the rear of the house. She looks back, then continues.

Cast[link]

• Patrick Wilson as Jeff Kohlver
• Ellen Page as Hayley Stark
• Sandra Oh as Judy Tokuda
• Odessa Rae as Janelle Rogers
• Gilbert John as Nighthawks Clerk

Production[link]

The idea for Hard Candy came from a news story on 20/20 producer David W. Higgins saw about young Japanese girls who would lure older businessmen to a location with the promise of meaningful conversation and would assault and mug the men with a gang of other girls once the men arrived.^[1] This led him to wonder, “What if the person you expect to be the predator is not who you expect it to be? What if it’s the other person?”^[1] He then hired writer Brian Nelson to flesh out the idea.^[1]

Due to the controversial nature of the work, the budget was kept under $1 million so that the production company would not ask to change anything.^[1] Sandra Oh agreed to do the film due to her desire to work with fellow Canadian actress Ellen Page, with whom she had appeared in Wilby Wonderful, although not in the same scenes in that film.^[6]

Very little dubbing was used in the film, with only a couple of lines modified in post-production. Only nine minutes of music are present in the film, with ambient sounds, such as heavy breathing, making up most of the soundtrack. The film was shot in eighteen and a half days, largely in sequence, and mostly on a soundstage.

Hayley wears a red hooded sweatshirt that is often seen as an allusion to “Little Red Riding Hood.”^[1] However, this was a serendipitous wardrobe choice by the creative team that was not realized until later on.^[1] Foreign marketing for the film made great use of this allusion. For example, a tagline on the Japanese site for the movie reads “Red Hood traps the Wolf in his own game.”^[7]

Jean-Clement Sorret was the digital colorist for the film, and is one of the few instances where a colorist received a spot in the opening credits.^[8] The film contains many coloring effects and “density shifts” of lighting to reflect the moods of the characters. For example, when Hayley gets angry the colors would be edited to be of lower frequency.^[1] One effect used which, as far as the director is aware of, had not been done in cinema before, was to brighten the lighting in filming and recorrect everything down in post-production.^[1] This allowed for facial details to be visible even while having a darkened atmosphere.^[1] The process required a custom-built digital intermediate to be made and proved to be extremely difficult, with corrections having to be made frame-by-frame in some instances.^[1]

Early working titles of the script were Vendetta and Snip Snip.^[8] The producer wanted a title with a “sugar and spice combination […] a mixture of harsh roughness, and innocence, and vulnerability,” and settled on the title Hard Candy.^[8]

Release[link]

The film premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival with a midnight screening. The Dolby Surround System failed before the screening and the audience was kept out until it was fixed.^[1]

Hard Candy opened in Los Angeles and New York City on April 14, 2006^[1] in a limited release. During its opening weekend, the film grossed nearly $30,000 per theater, the highest per-screen average in the top 50.^[1]

The American DVD was released on September 19, 2006 with two commentary tracks, an hour’s worth of making-of featurettes, six deleted and extended scenes, the script and director’s notebook, and trailers for Hard Candy and other Lionsgate films. The blu-ray release by Lionsgate Home Entertainment was scheduled for October 5, 2010.^[9]

Reception[link]

The film critics aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes gave a 68% positive rating based on 127 reviews. Caroline Westbrook at Empire Magazine called it “[a] cracking little thriller.” David Edwards at the Daily Mirror praised it as a “smart, challenging and timely look at the world of [I]nternet grooming.” Todd McCarthy at Variety praised the “spectacular performance by teenage thesp Ellen Page.”

Critics applauded Page’s performance; USA Today praised her for “remaining consistently convincing” to her role which is both “powerful and chilling.”^[10] She won the Best Actress award from the Austin Film Critics Association.^[11] The New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis recognized the film’s debt to “Ariel Dorfman and Neil LaBute, among others,” but did not care for the torture theme “in the age of Abu Ghraib.”^[12]

The film won three awards at the Sitges Film Festival, 2005: Slade won the Audience award for Best Feature Film and the Best Film award, and Brian Nelson, the writer, won the award for Best Screenplay.

The film grossed $1 million at the North American box office, and a further $6 million internationally.^[2]

In popular culture[link]

The German Neue Deutsche Härte band Oomph! based the video for their song “Beim ersten Mal tut’s immer weh” on the film, as did American metalcore band Beneath the Sky for their song “Terror Starts at Home.”

See also[link]

• 30 Days of Night directed by David Slade.
• The Twilight Saga: Eclipse directed by David Slade.
• To Catch a Predator

Notes and references[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Hard Candy (film)

• Hard Candy at the Internet Movie Database
• Hard Candy at AllRovi
• Hard Candy at Box Office Mojo
• Hard Candy at Rotten Tomatoes
• Hard Candy at Metacritic
• Review at Ain't It Cool
• October 19, 2003 draft script
• In 'Hard Candy,' an Internet Lolita Is Not as Innocent as She Looks, Manohla Dargis, April 14, 2006, New York Times.

Ellen Page
Ellen Page at the premiere for Inception, July 2010
Born	Ellen Philpotts-Page (1987-02-21) February 21, 1987 (age 25) Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1997–present

Ellen Philpotts-Page (born February 21, 1987), known professionally as Ellen Page, is a Canadian actress. Page received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her role as the title character in the film Juno. She won back-to-back Austin Film Critics Association Awards for Best Actress for her roles in Juno and Hard Candy.

She is also known for her starring roles in Inception, Super, Smart People, Whip It, and as Katherine "Kitty" Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand. In addition, Page received attention in Canada for award-winning roles in Pit Pony and Marion Bridge, as well as television shows Trailer Park Boys and ReGenesis.

In 2008, Page was nominated for Time's 100 Most Influential People list^[1] and placed #86 on FHM's Sexiest Women in the World list,^[2] and moved up to #70 for 2010.^[3] In June 2008, Page was named on Entertainment Weekly's future A-List stars list.^[4]

Early life[link]

Page was born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, the daughter of Martha Philpotts, a teacher, and Dennis Page, a graphic designer.^[5] She attended the Halifax Grammar School until grade 10, spent some time at Queen Elizabeth High School, and graduated from the Shambhala School in 2005. She also spent two years in Toronto, Ontario studying in the Interact Program at Vaughan Road Academy, along with close friend and fellow Canadian actor Mark Rendall.^[6][7] Growing up, Page enjoyed playing with action figures and climbing trees.^[8]

Career[link]

Page in 2007

Page began acting at age 4, appearing in numerous school plays. She first acted in front of the camera in 1997 at age 10 in the CBC television movie Pit Pony, which later spun off into a television series. This led to more roles in a number of small Canadian films and television series, notably playing Treena Lahey in Season 2 of Trailer Park Boys. At 16, she was cast in Mouth to Mouth, an independent film shot in Europe. Page starred in the 2005 movie Hard Candy and gained praise for "one of the most complex, disturbing and haunting performances of the year".^[9] She also appeared in X-Men: The Last Stand as Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat), a girl who can walk through walls. In the previous X-Men movies, the part had been used in brief cameos played by other actresses, but never as a main character. As the title character in Juno, Page garnered substantial praise; A. O. Scott of the New York Times noted her as being "frighteningly talented"^[10] and Roger Ebert said, "Has there been a better performance this year than Ellen Page's creation of Juno? I do not think so".^[11] Page was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Juno, but lost to Marion Cotillard in La Vie En Rose. The role, however, did win her several other awards, including a Canadian Comedy Award, Independent Spirit Award, and Satellite Award. Page also has starred in Smart People, which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Although released after Juno, Smart People was shot earlier.^[12] Her other film credits include An American Crime, which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival; The Tracey Fragments, which was released in November 2007 in Canada and May 2008 in the U.S.; and The Stone Angel.

In 2007, she was attached to play the title character in an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre^[13][14] and had planned to work on an as-yet unmade film entitled Jack and Diane opposite Olivia Thirlby, with whom she co-starred in Juno^[15] but it was announced in August 2009 that her role in Jack and Diane would now be played by the actress Alison Pill. Before his death in January 2008, Heath Ledger had discussed with Page the idea of starring in his directorial debut, The Queen's Gambit.^[16]

Page hosted Saturday Night Live on March 1, 2008^[17] and on May 3, 2009, she guest starred in the episode "Waverly Hills 9-0-2-1-D'oh" of the animated series The Simpsons as a character named Alaska Nebraska, a parody of Hannah Montana.^[18] She also starred in Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It, alongside Juliette Lewis, Marcia Gay Harden, Drew Barrymore and Kristen Wiig.^[19] The film premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival and had its wide release on October 2, 2009.^[20]

She features in Michael Lander's film Peacock, opposite Cillian Murphy, Susan Sarandon, Bill Pullman and Josh Lucas, which was released in 2010 despite an original release date of 2009.^[21][22][23] In August 2009, Page began shooting the thriller Inception, a film directed by Christopher Nolan and co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ken Watanabe.^[24] The film was released on July 16, 2010.

She has starred in the film Super,^[25] and will reportedly play Stacie Andree in an upcoming film about Laurel Hester.^[26]

As of 2010^[update], she serves as a spokesperson for Cisco Systems in a series of ads appearing in three commercials set in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. On May 26, 2010 it was reported in a column on "Deadline Hollywood" and by Entertainment Weekly that Page will star in the new HBO series Tilda alongside Diane Keaton, who plays the title role. Tilda is based on the life of Nikki Finke, the founder of the influential Hollywood blog, DeadlineHollywood.com.^[27] Tilda was reportedly dropped by HBO due to friction between the creators.^[28] She is also the narrator of the documentary on colony collapse disorder, Vanishing of the Bees.

In April 2011 it was announced that Page would co-star in the Woody Allen film To Rome with Love alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Penélope Cruz, and Alec Baldwin.^[29]

Personal life[link]

Page resides in her hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia and has two dogs named Julie and Sprout.^[30][31] She is prone to walking and talking in her sleep.^[32] In 2008, Page was one of 30 celebrities who participated in an online ad series for U.S. Campaign for Burma, calling for an end to the military dictatorship in Myanmar.^[33] She describes herself as a pro-choice feminist.^[34]

In 2008, Page spent a month living in an eco-village, studying permaculture at the Lost Valley Educational Center outside Eugene, Oregon.^{[35][36][37][38]}

Filmography[link]

Awards and nominations[link]

• BAFTA
  • Nominated for the 2008 Orange Rising Star Award^[48][49]
• Academy Awards
  • Nominated for the 2008 Oscar, Category: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for Juno (2007)^[50]
• Scream Awards
  • Nominated for the 2010 Best Science Fiction Actress

See also[link]

Canada portal

• List of former child actors from Canada

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ellen Page

• Ellen Page at the Internet Movie Database

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2010)

Emily Browning
Browning at the 2011 Hamptons International Film Festival
Born	Emily Jane Browning (1988-12-07) 7 December 1988 (age 23) Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Occupation	Actress, model, singer
Years active	1998–present

Emily Jane Browning^[1] (born 7 December 1988)^[1] is an Australian film actress, singer and fashion model. She won the 2005 AFI International Award for Best Actress for her role in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Browning won an AFI Young Actor's Award in 2002 and was nominated for the same award in 1999 and 2003. She was also nominated for Broadcast Film Critics Association Critics' Choice Award for Best Young Performer and Young Artist Awards Best Performance in a Feature Film, Leading Young Actress^[2] (both in 2005).

Early life[link]

Browning was born in Melbourne, the daughter of Andrew and Shelley Browning, and has two younger brothers (Nicholas and Matthew).^[1][3] She has always been interested in the arts, citing English literature, photography, and fashion design as her favourite school subjects.^{[citation needed]}

She took a break from acting in order to complete her education at Eltham High School, where, in November 2006, she concluded her Victorian Certificate of Education exams.^[4]

Career[link]

Browning's acting career began at the age of eight, when she was noticed by a classmate's father at a school play and he recommended that she pursue acting as a profession.^{[citation needed]} Her debut role was on the 1998 Hallmark Channel movie Echo of Thunder.^[5] Additional roles in Australian film and television productions soon followed, including recurring parts in the television series Blue Heelers from 2000 to 2002, and Something in the Air from 2000 to 2001.

In 2001, Browning appeared as the daughter of a character played by Billy Connolly in The Man Who Sued God. She made her American film debut in 2002's Ghost Ship, and won an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Young Actress, the same year.^[6] In 2003, she appeared opposite Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom in 2003's Ned Kelly, and then reunited with Connolly the following year in the film adaptation of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, in which she played Violet Baudelaire.

In 2006, Browning appeared in the music video for Evermore's "Light Surrounding You".^[7] In the behind-the-scenes video for the clip, the band stated, "[We] suck as actors, so we decided to get Emily."^[8] She attended the L'Oreal Fashion Festival as a festival ambassador on 1 February 2007.^[9]

Browning played the lead in the 2009 horror film The Uninvited, an American remake of the 2003 South Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters. However, citing exhaustion, she then turned down a request to audition for the role of Bella Swan in Twilight, despite an endorsement from series author Stephenie Meyer.^[10][11] In 2009, she was cast as Baby Doll in Zack Snyder's action film Sucker Punch, as a replacement for Amanda Seyfried, who dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.^[12] Filming took place in Vancouver from September 2009 to January 2010,^[13] and the film was released on 25 March 2011.^[14] In an interview at the convention, she confirmed that she would be singing in the film, while claiming that her audition tape brought tears to her casting agent's eyes and the song she selected ("Killing Me Softly") was one of Zach Snyder's wife Deborah's favourites, which Browning referred to as the "selling point" on her being cast in the role.^[15]

Browning plays the lead role in the independent Australian film Sleeping Beauty, directed by Julia Leigh.^[16] She replaced friend and fellow young Australian actress Mia Wasikowska, who was committed to a film adaptation of Jane Eyre at the time.^[17] The film screened at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and the Sydney Film Festival. Browning said, "Even reading the screenplay, it made me feel uncomfortable. But that was something that attracted me to it. I would prefer to polarise an audience as opposed to making an entertaining film everybody feels ambivalent about."^[18]

She was also considered for the role of Katniss Everdeen in "The Hunger Games" but was beaten out by Jennifer Lawrence.

Filmography[link]

Discography[link]

Awards[link]

Won:

• 2002 Australian Film Institute Young Actor's Award (Halifax f.p: Playing God)
• 2005 Australian Film Institute International Award for Best Actress (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events)^[4]

Nominated:

• 1999 Australian Film Institute Young Actor's Award (The Echo of Thunder)
• 2003 Australian Film Institute Young Actor's Award (After the Deluge)
• 2005 BFCA Awards: Best Young Actress (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events)
• 2005 Young Artist Awards: Best Performance in a Feature Film, Leading Young Actress (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events)

See also[link]

• Cinema of Australia

References[link]

External links[link]

• Emily Browning at the Internet Movie Database