The pairing of a playwright and a music video director -- each making their first proper foray into feature filmmaking -- seems at once sensible and ill-advised. It's not inconceivable that the stylistic clash between the two sensibilities would be jarring, resulting in a finished product that is at best inconsistent and at worst incoherent. It also stands to reason, however, that in such a claustrophobic setting, a strong playwright would be uniquely capable of executing plot, character, and subtext through dialogue alone, and a director coming from advertising would be able to make it visually arresting with the location's limited pallette. Hard Candy is a sterling example of the latter, exhibiting a strong visual style which never overpowers the narrative.
Particularly of note, though, is the performance of Ellen Page as Hayley. Having been one of the two good parts of the otherwise deplorable X-Men: The Last Stand (the other being Kelsey Grammer's turn as Dr. Hank McCoy), it's not surprising that Page is talented, only that she is this talented. The film rests firmly upon the shoulders -- or specifically the faces -- of stars Page and Patrick Wilson, and though they both perform admirably, Page steals the film with equal parts guile, deception, sympathy, charm, and vulnerability. So much of the subtext of the film is told in subtle shifts of gaze, in the barely noticeable narrowing and widening of her eyes, in carefully chosen beats and hesitations that reveal the slowly growing cracks in Hayley's facade, both intentional and unintentional. We are at first shocked to see her innocent precocity give way to fervent antagonism, and are later concerned to see glimpses of uncertainty and apprehension rise to the surface.
Hard Candy is a discomforting film not for the issues it tackles, but for how it addresses them. Jeff explains away his unseemly preoccupations, but neither Hayley nor the filmmakers endorse his simplistic -- and, as Hayley notes, overly polished -- justification. Instead, the audience is left with the onus of gauging the ethics of the actions of two morally ambiguous characters who have both, at one point or another, warranted both our sympathies and our resentment.