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.

A drama about a teenager, Helen, who has been in care for most of her life.

A student at the local school Helen attends has gone missing and Helen volunteers to take the part of the missing girl in a police reconstruction. She gradually immerses herself in the role of the missing student and meets the girl's parents possibly as a way of trying to find what was missing from her own life in care and possibly as a way of finding her own identity.

A nice idea for a story but not big enough for a feature length film. A slow movie which is patchy in places.

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.

A college student, Joy, goes missing and the police enlist the aid of another student, Helen, to re-enact Joy's last movements. Helen, an orphan brought up in an institution, lacks everything Joy possessed - family, personality,intelligence, a boy friend. But as her impersonation progresses she starts to hijack Joy's life, including her family and boy friend.

This great idea for a film is sabotaged by poor direction and acting. Apart from the lead actress, the actors are wooden (and occasionally downright bad -- I think I could do better myself!). The direction is amateurish.

Camera work and editing is professional and well done. The script is adequate.

I suspect the producers found themselves financially strapped and had to make do with second rate actors. Helen has the seeds of a good film; seeds that fail to sprout.

Worth seeing if you are studying film

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.