(1993)
1.5
Brian J. Dillard
Laughably pretentious and gloriously half-baked, this supposed "statement" about the way men emotionally dismember women applies a metaphorical sledgehammer when a poetic scalpel would do. David Lynch's surrealist glamour is never exactly subtle, but even at its Technicolor apotheosis it suggests more than it insists. For her debut as a director and co-screenwriter, however, daughter Jennifer Chambers Lynch hews closer to a high-concept Adrian Lyne fever dream than to her father's inimitable oeuvre. Perhaps comparisons between the two Lynch generations is unfair, for Boxing Helena would be a debacle no matter what its director's last name. Julian Sands -- the poor man's Jeremy Irons -- stammers and lurches his way though scene after scene of borderline S & M self-abasement. Sitting through his effete take on upper-class longing is a bit like watching a petulant kindergartener whimpering piteously for his mother's milk. The ordinarily bewitching Sherilyn Fenn, meanwhile, does little to flesh out the underwritten high-class hot-pants character with which she's been saddled. Mercurial without motivation, her character-free character slanders the female sex far more than the film's stylized violence could ever threaten it. Despite the feminist outcry that greeted the picture's release, the only real misogyny here lies in Lynch and Philippe Caland's script.
Boxing Helena on AllMovie
Boxing Helena (1993)
