Acclaimed video and commercial director David Slade’s debut film “Hard Candy” is a tough nut. Uncompromising, upsetting and certainly unsettling, it’s also deeply funny, strikingly suspenseful and movingly dramatic. A sensation at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, it is a fireball sure to create heated discussions, arguments and discourse as soon as the curtain comes down.

Haley (Ellen Page, Kitty Pride in next month’s “X-Men: The Last Stand”) is a smart, witty and utterly precocious 14-year-old girl who has struck up a flirty online friendship with 32-year-old professional photographer Jeff Kohlver, (Patrick Wilson, “The Alamo”). After weeks of communicating in chat rooms and on internet messenger services, they’ve finally decided to meet. Soon, Haley talks the sexy and charming older man to take her back to his place so she can check out his MP3 collection.

This sounds like a recipe for disaster. Jeff’s home is secluded, tucked away inside California suburbia by a blanket of trees. More, the neighbors that he does have are all away on various trips and excursions, basically leaving the two of them as alone as any two people possibly could be. But nothing here is what it seems. Jeff might not be a pedophile getting ready to pounce and Haley might not be a defenseless little girl all dolled up for a day out with friends. A battle of wills is brewing, and by the time all is said and done the idea of who is predator and who is prey is going to be turned on its head.

Hot damn if “Hard Candy” isn’t a manipulative little potboiler that had me nestled far too uncomfortably right at the edge of my seat. This movie is “Oleanna” on acid, “Death and the Maiden” without the third wheel husband. It is a hot-button thriller meant to enflame and infuriate. Yet, it is also laugh-out-loud funny, perversely so at times, and gosh darn it if the pipsqueak female Paul Kersey sitting at its center isn’t oftentimes a bubbly effervescent delight.

I’d be lying if I said the feature won me over completely. I felt dirty after it was finished, covered in such grit and grime I knew it would take two baths and a hot shower to get me feeling clean. Playwright Brian Nelson’s screenplay is completely unafraid to dive into each and every one of the picture’s more unsavory aspects, and lord knows director Slade is totally comfortable plunging in right behind him. His camera (shot on crystalline digital video by Jo Willems) is unflinching, the filmmaker engaging in some of the most discomforting close-ups I’ve ever seen. There are moments here that would probably even make Tarantino blush, the whole thing finishing up on a coda so ambiguous and disquieting the shivers going up and down my spine might not ever go away.

But the fearless nature of this film excites me, makes me glad I have the job I do and reminds me how exhilarating and one-of-a-kind each droplet of cinema can be when passionate and talented people conspire to create it. Slade is a talent to watch, his usage of texture and color, time and space, absolutely stunning. He also manages to extract fantastic performances from his two leads, pushing both to their breaking point and then slamming his foot upon the accelerator forcing them to go beyond it. Page, 17 when this was shot, is a revelation, the young woman giving a performance so sensational she immediately enters the same pantheon Anna Paquin or Keisha Castle-Hughes resided in after they made “The Piano” and “Whale Rider.”

The edgier and more controversial aspects of the film don’t bother me all that much. It’s a guarantee that this will not hold true for everyone but, for me at least, I’m perfectly okay with the filmmakers going there with such forceful abandon. What I’m not quite okay with is the way the climax left me hanging. While I don’t necessarily need closure, I do need something different than this.

What, exactly, I can’t say. I’m usually just fine with thrillers that leave a few questions unanswered, fates of some of its characters unknown, but in this case I couldn’t help but feel like Slade and Nelson had settled for something akin to a minor copout. After pushing the envelope for so long it was almost like the duo just couldn’t bring themselves to take things all the way to the finish line, the bad taste of it all salting my mouth like a tumble down dirty a hill.

No matter. “Hard Candy” is a striking debut, one that feels as immediate and genuine as fast-breaking world events interrupting an evening’s broadcast programming for a special important announcement. At the very least, it provokes discussion and discourse about subject matter usually only talked about in hushed whispers than quickly forgotten never to be mentioned again. Most definitely, this is one cinematic confection that certainly won’t melt away from memory after the curtains close.

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)