Boxing Helena (1993)
Netflix delivered this steamy love story last week, and we watched it a few days ago.
Julian Sands (remember the spider doctor in Arachnophobia?) plays the brilliant surgeon Dr Nick Cavanaugh. A troubled young doctor who's got a seemingly good life, but has a nagging obsession with a one-night stand, Helena (Sherilyn Fenn).
The first bit of the film creeps along as we get to know Dr Nick. Sands does a good job of making the doctor both confident and insecure. He's a brilliant plastic surgeon who is also Chief of Surgery. Flashbacks show us his tortured childhood as his father ignores both him and his adulterous mother. His mother has passed, as we're at her funeral in the first bit of the film, and he decides to live in her house.
After a hard day's work, Dr Nick meets his pal Larry (Art Garfunkel, yes, the musician) for a drink. In the corner he spies Helena, and makes a dash for the door. His obsession becomes more obvious in the following scenes; out for a jog he climbs the tree outside her apartment and watches her with her boyfriend Ray (Bill Paxton), he invites her to a housewarming party and obsesses over her as she dances in his fountain and leaves with his friend.
She forgets her purse, though, and in a very stalker-esque move, when he meets her to deliver it (late, at the airport, so she's missed her flight), he's removed her phonebook, so they have to return to his house to seek it.
This is where things get weird.
As she storms from his house, after discovering that he'd secreted the book away to lure her back there, she's hit by a speeding truck. She wakes up with amputated legs; he proclaims it was necessary to save her life. A series of near-misses with visitors, and he eventually amputates her arms--so she'll need him as much as he needs her.
Throughout this mess is a lot of incestuous flash-back (he really digs his mom), and some role-switching fantasy in his head. His girlfriend Anna (Betsy Clark) visits and tries to seduce him back to her (she'd earlier dumped him after the fountain dance), and he imagines she's Helena (who's watching, gagged, from the other room). He hires a hooker who looks a lot like Helena and while he's doing the hooker, he's watching Helena for her input (she seems to dig it, but denies watching later). At one point while pleading with Helena, he fantasizes that she's got her arms and legs, and has fantasy sex with her.
Just when she's starting to come around (give up), Ray finds her, and beats the crap out of Dr Nick. As he looses consciousness, under a falling statue of Aphrodite, Helena is calling out for him; she finally loves and needs him.
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