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.

Bizarre. Bad. I felt that until the last 7 minutes, that Joy and Helen were the same person. I thought Joy/Helen had multiple personality disorder. I think the directors wanted me to think that. It turns out not to be so, but I can't get over the idea that the directors intentionally fooled me into thinking it. It needs more. It felt cut off without closure. The "re-enactment" was never completed. Who ever heard of re-enacting a crime to be filmed anyway? The only time I have heard of that is for a show like Unsolved Mysteries. I have never heard of it happening within the first days of a missing persons investigation. Maybe they conduct police investigations differently in the UK/Ireland than in the U.S. This film is not for a person who didn't get sufficient sleep the night before. It will put you to sleep rather than intrigue you! Or, if it does intrigue you, you will be left with unanswered questions and wondering why you just wasted an hour and twenty minutes of your time.

A barely funded film, the only reason I even came to know of Helen's existence was under the recommendation of a trusted friend. It is the feature debut of film-making duo Lawlor and Molloy, previously known for a series of rule-dictated shorts; rules to which Helen also abides.A seemingly uncomplicated story, Helen's eponymous character is a care- home raised college student struggling to get by in a world where she has known neither family nor friends. She is hired to play the part of Joy, a missing girl from her college, in a police reconstruction of her disappearance. As Helen reenacts the life of Joy, she sees a world she has never known, and finds herself considering her own identity.The film's slow motion credits introduce us to the long takes, harrowing score, and unsettling beauty of what we are soon to see unfold. The eerie music which becomes synonymous with the central theme of identity is simultaneously uncomfortable and entrancing, drawing us into the film whilst giving the sense it may not always be a pleasant experience. Nay-sayers have cited some of the film's less convincing performances as a deterrent, but the central performance is sufficiently strong, and often moving, to hold everything together in the face of the amateur actors. The effect of the long takes is wonderfully gripping, helping us descend with this character to her new role, and drawing us into the splendour of the slow pacing. The cinematography is undoubtedly the film's area of expertise, the effulgence and mastery with which the directors convey that which goes unspoken truly fascinating and endearing. Townsend's performance meshes with the melancholy of her character, crafting a beautiful and heartbreaking impression of a girl lost in life. Her fragility and dark wistfulness is perfectly portrayed, giving us a realistic and relatable character.A superbly shot piece bearing all the symptoms of genuinely transcendent cinema, Helen is an unforgettable film, and one which explores its ideas in a subtle, moving, and inspirational manner.

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.