Helen

I agree with jlon and arnold here. This film is really tedious, dull, leaden, plodding, nothing really happens... The comparisons someone made with Antonioni are good ones, somehow his films are riveting. Because they re cinematic. There's such attention paid to each shot, which slowly builds a mood and atmosphere. This isn t cinematic, it feels very limited. Its hard work, for no rewards. Antonioni s films are hard work, but somehow they pay off. This just got on my nerves. One critic calls it 'a resurgence of UK art cinema.' Gawd help us in that case. The acting just isn t, it plays like the characters are reading an autocue. Maybe this was deliberate. I ve decided now to boycott all British and Irish 'art' films excepting the superb Shane Meadows. They re just not worth wasting time with.

I saw about twenty films at the 2008 Sydney Film Festival, and Helen was probably my favourite feature. Steadfast in mystery, atmosphere, weirdness and emotional bleakness, the film follows the slow-growing obsession of the eponymous heroine with the former life of another girl, Joy, who disappeared in the local park one day, and whom Helen is 'playing' in a police reconstruction of the event.

The film has a beautiful cryptic quality, not in any conventional kind of whodunnit sense, but as regards both the elusive character of Helen and the nature of the film itself. The long, unbroken takes, great silences and restrained, almost self-effacing interactions amongst the characters generate fascination and curiosity. Is it some kind of hyper-naturalism? Or the opposite of naturalism? The players are often facing away from each other, or off the screen, or shot from behind, or just so that you can't see their faces. When a creepily patronising policewoman arrives to brief Joy's schoolmates about the reconstruction of the disappearance, half the scene is viewed via its reflection in a mirror.

Some of the dialogue is bizarre in its expositional nature, enough to prompt amusement, yet at others times it is completely evasive. Helen feels such a great hollow within herself (she has been raised in care, and her past and parentage are shrouded in mystery) that her vocalisation mostly consists of dull murmured statements. The strongest indication that some of the weirdness is in droll taste is an amusing scene in which a morose-looking teacher appears to do the worst job in the world in trying inspire the students with talk of 'blue skies thinking'.

The film is framed by metronomically perfect editing, fades to black, abstraction-making shots of dappled light filtering through park trees and a glacial ambient score. It reminded me at times of David Lynch in its poetic design. It offers a unique vision of a situation which opens onto multiple mysteries, most importantly the mystery of what is inside Helen, played with supernatural understatement by Annie Townsend. And it is emotionally confronting, with some moments that are very difficult to bear. This is beautiful cinema.

Saw this at the 2008 Sydney Film Festival so apologies if I'm short on detail.

This film does look good, with an all-pervasive dreamy quality. That said, the vocabulary of camera movements is eventually too meagre and repetitive. At times it seems that every shot is a slow dolly.

Like Bloomer wrote in hir comment, the acting and dialog is peculiarly stilted. I initially took this for a deliberate ironic or alienating effect and I read the film as a satire of English New-Labour era 'caring'. The scenes with the teacher, policewoman and social worker all stuck with me for this reason.

But by the end I was forced to conclude that the awkwardness was unintentional and I that I have an overactive imagination. As Alan Donald commented, this film's virtues are simply overwhelmed by bad acting and direction.

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.

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.