An extraordinarily dull seventy-nine minutes of unmitigated nothingness, Helen follows the story of a girl named Helen, who is assigned to play the rôle of the missing Joy in a televised reenactment of her disappearance. Helen is a girl who has spent her life in institutions, having been abandoned by her parents at an early age. Joy may be regarded as the polar opposite, with a loving family and comfortable habitat. In her preparations for the reenactment, Helen begins to actually become Joy: she takes supper with Joy’s parents; begs for sex from Joy’s boyfriend; wears Joy’s frightful yellow leather jacket. It is a film that looks into one person’s desire to change her past identity.

Helen is a picture guilty of attempting to be arty at the expense of forgetting to entertain, which ought to be the primary purpose of any right-minded director. The shots last minutes at a time and are rarely in focus. This is not clever, as it was clearly intended to be, but dull and harmful to the eyes. The acting is no better. The players refuse to show any sort of emotion whatever. Their voices are spoken in a monotone which would make the most patient of movie-goers begin to shuffle the almost immediately. Such problems cannot be attributed solely to the acting, for they are most certainly directorial faults as well. There is hardly any music in the film, which is badly needed with the five minute stills. The only thing resembling music is a monotone beep which seems to mimic the characters’ voices. One feels that the monotonous atmosphere of the film is brought out to make it seem more realistic and raw, but at this it fails. It is difficult to feel sympathetic to such pathetic characters.

Also, the plot is very weak. Why would the police put searching on halt to have a girl walk about, simulating what is already known? Why does it matter that she looks similar? Certainly mental alikeness would be more helpful. And the question of what happened to Joy goes unanswered, which made the film seem unfinished.

The film, however, is not without its redeeming qualities. It makes use of irony in a most amusing way. The school children are in a sort of social development course, being taught “blue-sky thinking,” by a chipper fellow with both legs missing. The camera work in this scene is surprisingly good. And despite the continual out of focus images, there are some very pretty landscapes filmed. The basic idea of the film (that some are not blessed with good relationships and should be given the opportunity for a new life) is not a bad one. It has cinematic potential, which the director failed to bring out and the writers failed to create a plot.

Helen is, as the programme says, “an unusual film,” but it is not unusually good. For those who like to be entertained, I could not possibly recommend it. But for those looking to appreciate the subtler qualities of lower budget (£293,000) film, it might be worth a trip to the cinema.