Taglines: Beyond love, beyond obsession, there hides something beyond reason.
Boxing Helena movie storyline. Nick Cavanaugh is a lonely Atlanta surgeon obsessed with a woman named Helena. After she suffers a high grade tibial fracture in a hit-and-run motor vehicle accident in front of his home, he kidnaps and treats her in his house surreptitiously, amputating both of her legs above the knee.
Later, he amputates her healthy arms above the elbow after she tries to choke him. Though Helena is the victim of Nick’s kidnapping and mutilation, she dominates the dialogue with her constant ridiculing of him for all of his shortcomings.
Boxing Helena is a 1993 American romantic mystery thriller film with horror elements directed by Jennifer Lynch, and starring Sherilyn Fenn, Julian Sands, and Bill Paxton. The plot follows a surgeon whose growing obsession with a woman leads him to amputate her limbs and hold her captive in his home after she suffers a car accident.
The film garnered notoriety prior to its release after protracted legal battles with Madonna and Kim Basinger, both of whom backed out of the leading role of Helena. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1993, where it received critical praise. After receiving an NC-17 rating by the MPAA, the film was given an R-rating on appeal and released in the United States in September 1993, but received critical backlash and was a financial failure.
Film Review for Boxing Helena
Distraught and unable to cope with a break-up from the beautiful Helena, surgeon Nick Cavanaugh is surprised to find her at his mercy after a terrible accident. He proceeds to remove her limbs one by one, leaving her to live in a box.
It’s a salutary lesson that a film that hopes to be accorded some gasping notoriety for its twisted sexuality and violence, all wrapped up a weird sub-sub-comedy, is better known for its behind-the-camera shenanigans. According to the case, Kim Basinger was due to play the heartless and finally limbless Helena, but pulled out of her contract (understandably in hindsight given the risible result) causing a stew of writs and tiresome legality which left the film playing a sad second-fiddle with its own hoped for controversy.
Sherylin Fenn took over as the object of Julian Sands unnatural obsession, and she looks unsure what she’s just stepped into, overcooking what should be a fiery, demented victim of her own self-hatred as much as the doctor’s cracked love. Jennifer Chambers Lynch has clearly looked to her father David and his offbeam Americana liberated from textual logic, but she has none of his sly humour and visual intoxication.
Daddy was all subtext, daughter forces it all onto the surface, robbing the film of a much-needed ambiguity. Cavanaugh, played with Sands usual giddy imbalance, is a Freudian mishmash tormented by unnatural desires for his deceased harpy of a mother, transferring his affection onto the dreadful Helena, a ridiculous concoction of curves and carnality. How she torments the befuddled doc. Even after a car crash forces him to amputate both her legs, and traps her in his home, she wheels about in an ancient wheelchair, flinging things at him and screeching like a car alarm.
If the film wasn’t so painfully unwatchable, it might have taken on a splashy, crackpot humour of its own. No luck, Lynch has no control of her own filmmaking limbs, and what should be an arch parable of dark sexual fantasy teeming with possession, control, and revenge, its dopey castration metaphors and despicable characters leave unmanned, unwomanned and entirely unlikable.
Boxing Helena (1993)
Directed by: Jennifer Lynch
Starring: Julian Sands, Sherilyn Fenn, Bill Paxton, Art Garfunkel, Betsy Clark, Kurtwood Smith, Nicolette Scorsese, Meg Register, Marla Levine, Kim Lentz
Screenplay by: Jennifer Lynch
Production Design by: Paul Huggins
Cinematography by: Bojan Bazelli, Frank Byers
Film Editing by: David Finfer
Set Decoration by: Sharon Braunstein
Art Direction by: Paul Huggins
Music by: Graeme Revell
MPAA Rating: R on appeal for two scenes of strong sexuality and language.
Distributed by: Orion Classics
Release Date: September 3, 1993
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