Helen
Helen
| 19 June 2008 (USA)
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An 18 year old girl called Joy has gone missing. Another girl called Helen is a few weeks away from leaving her care home. Helen is asked to 'play' Joy in a police reconstruction that will retrace Joy's last known movements. Joy had everything. A loving family, a boyfriend, a bright future. Helen, parent-less, has lived in institutions all her life and has never been close to anyone. Gradually Helen begins to immerse herself into the role, visiting the people and places that Joy knew; quietly and carefully insinuating her way into the lost girl's life. But is Helen trying to find out what happened to Joy that day, or is she searching for her own identity?

Reviews
Bardlerx Strictly average movie
Protraph Lack of good storyline.
Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie
GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.
plawes-98445 To all those amateur critics out there, (and I am one of them...), not all films need to be acted and directed in the same way.This was an absorbing, mesmerising film. Beautifully shot, acted, and directed with the intention to empathise with the single character, 'Helen'.Yes they used stilted narrative and 'wooden' characters around her, but wasn't this intentional? To draw the viewer into Helen's view of the world and people around her.It may not appeal to everyone but for me it worked.I would recommend this film to anyone that is willing to look at the world through another persons eyes.
jennifer-alongi-richmond Bizarre. Bad. I felt that until the last 7 minutes, that Joy and Helen were the same person. I thought Joy/Helen had multiple personality disorder. I think the directors wanted me to think that. It turns out not to be so, but I can't get over the idea that the directors intentionally fooled me into thinking it. It needs more. It felt cut off without closure. The "re-enactment" was never completed. Who ever heard of re-enacting a crime to be filmed anyway? The only time I have heard of that is for a show like Unsolved Mysteries. I have never heard of it happening within the first days of a missing persons investigation. Maybe they conduct police investigations differently in the UK/Ireland than in the U.S. This film is not for a person who didn't get sufficient sleep the night before. It will put you to sleep rather than intrigue you! Or, if it does intrigue you, you will be left with unanswered questions and wondering why you just wasted an hour and twenty minutes of your time.
Baron Ronan Doyle A barely funded film, the only reason I even came to know of Helen's existence was under the recommendation of a trusted friend. It is the feature debut of film-making duo Lawlor and Molloy, previously known for a series of rule-dictated shorts; rules to which Helen also abides.A seemingly uncomplicated story, Helen's eponymous character is a care- home raised college student struggling to get by in a world where she has known neither family nor friends. She is hired to play the part of Joy, a missing girl from her college, in a police reconstruction of her disappearance. As Helen reenacts the life of Joy, she sees a world she has never known, and finds herself considering her own identity.The film's slow motion credits introduce us to the long takes, harrowing score, and unsettling beauty of what we are soon to see unfold. The eerie music which becomes synonymous with the central theme of identity is simultaneously uncomfortable and entrancing, drawing us into the film whilst giving the sense it may not always be a pleasant experience. Nay-sayers have cited some of the film's less convincing performances as a deterrent, but the central performance is sufficiently strong, and often moving, to hold everything together in the face of the amateur actors. The effect of the long takes is wonderfully gripping, helping us descend with this character to her new role, and drawing us into the splendour of the slow pacing. The cinematography is undoubtedly the film's area of expertise, the effulgence and mastery with which the directors convey that which goes unspoken truly fascinating and endearing. Townsend's performance meshes with the melancholy of her character, crafting a beautiful and heartbreaking impression of a girl lost in life. Her fragility and dark wistfulness is perfectly portrayed, giving us a realistic and relatable character.A superbly shot piece bearing all the symptoms of genuinely transcendent cinema, Helen is an unforgettable film, and one which explores its ideas in a subtle, moving, and inspirational manner.
andyd-1 The film is awful! I only saw this because the rental company thinks it is the similarly named film 'Helen', starring Ashley Judd.In this UK/Irish Helen, the acting is terribly stilted, the film constantly uses the same slowly panning camera technique which just becomes tedious. You can see pauses where the actors are trying to recall dialogue etc.I've got to be honest, I think all this lottery funding is continuing to lead to hopeless UK films being funded and produced. I don't know why this film would have won an award.The only think I can say is that technical of film and props etc was good.