Boxing Helena (1993) no stars A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1998 by Serdar Yegulalp
BOXING HELENA is a real act of nerve. It takes the two very worst kinds of movies -- the Pretentious Art Bore and the Ludicrous Cheat -- and synthesizes them. Which is not what the filmmakers were thinking, of course, but there you are.
The movie is the product of Jennifer Lynch, who has the distinction of being director David Lynch's daughter. On the basis of the evidence, talent skipped a generation in the Lynch dynasty. The movie is painfully like a bad Lynch movie -- or better to say, like a bad imitation that didn't have the initative to at least be a parody. It also speaks well for Kim Basinger, who sued to be let out of the production, and has since gone on to redeem herself in the majestic L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, among other things.
Julian Sands stars as Dr. Nick Cavanaugh. We know he's a cold-hearted snot because he walks away from his dad's coffin before it's lowered all the way into the ground. He is a surgeon who specializes in putting arms and legs back on, and based on what little we know about the movie, we can also guess (correctly) that he has a thing for yanking 'em off as well. Sands plays Cavanaugh as the kind of oaf who has women "accidentally" set fire to his clothing at parties.
Nick grows obsessed with a woman named Helena (Sherilyn Fenn), an insufferably irritating person. In an attempt to make her sexy and mysterious, the filmmakers stoop to ripping off LA DOLCE VITA and have her bathe in the fountain at a party. Yes. When she gets hit by a truck and loses her legs -- in what has to be the single most unconvincing auto accident ever put on film, short of Ned Beatty's in the horrible SHADOWS IN THE STORM -- Nick kidnaps her and keeps her as a kind of human statue. Just to make sure the point is hammered brutally home, we constantly get insert shots of the armless Venus DeMilo sculpture. And shots of a bird in a cage. Yes.
Is there a good story lurking anywhere in this? Maybe. Part of the problem lies in the fact that obsession alone does not make a character interesting. Neither Nick nor Helena are the kind of people that would be worth five minutes at a lunch counter, and so no matter what weird paces they get put through, no one's going to care. Movies about obsessions that the viewers do not share are hard to make, unless you make it satirical (as did CRASH) or at least try to convey something of what the obsession means personally (as did LOLITA).
And then there's the idiotic cheat of an ending, which borrows from Emilio Estevez's execreable WISDOM. Which, if you don't know what that refers to, you're encouraged to find out.
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