Helen (2008)

Cautiously Recommended

Ireland/UK

Feature Film

Directors: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy

Writers: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy, Ben Slater

Cinematographer: Ole Birkeland

Composer: Dennis McNulty

Cast: Annie Townsend, Sandie Malia, Dennis Jobling, Sonia Saville, Danny Groenland, Sheila Hamilton, Betty Ashe

When a girl from a happy middle-class family disappears, Helen, a shy and quiet girl, who lives in a care home and is about to turn 18, gets selected to represent her in a police reconstruction of her last known movements, allowing her to briefly feel what it’s like to see the world through someone else’s eyes, in Lawlor and Molloy’s formally elegant and thematically intriguing film, let down slightly by some rather awkward supporting performances and some occasionally unwieldy dialogue. Iain.Stott