Abbie Cornish and Heath Ledger give performances of absolute conviction in this film by Neil Armfield: an inexpressibly painful study of a young couple whose love is consecrated to heroin, and whose hellish breakdown happens, inevitably, in the drug's shadow.

Cornish plays Candy, a painter passionately in love with Dan (Ledger), a would-be poet. Drugs become a tragic part of their intimacy and their adventure, and under the dangerous tutelage of their friend Casper (Geoffrey Rush), a wayward professor and smackhead, they come to believe that heroin is a bohemian lifestyle-choice which they can abandon whenever they choose.

An excellent, heartfelt film to compare with Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream.