Blake Ridder’s Help purports to be an erotic thriller, but more often than not it comes off as the poorly executed opening sequences of a softcore porno–the part where the couples meet for an awkward dinner and no one knows how to cook normal and all the eating is fake? There’s quite a bit of eyefucking from an off-brand Jude Law (Lows James) and very little sexual tension otherwise. There are multiple scenes in which Ed and Amy (played by Emily Redpath, recently on stage as Juliet alongside Derek Jacobi this past month!) stare at each other silently from through doors, across the room, even at the same table, while flashbacking to an inane first visit without substance or impact.
There is a cringe drunk dance sequence in which James thrashes about in an Elaine Benes imitation that will make your skin crawl. His girlfriend has just revealed to her friend that she’s been physically abused for months and they’re hatching a plan to escape, when Liv (Sarah A Marks) decides to blindfold her boyfriend and have him guess who’s dancing with him sexy. When he guesses wrong, she knees him in the crotch. But what you don’t know until later (!) is that Amy knows (!) that Liv is actually the one who’s abusing James (!) and she’s also hiding that James and she have a baby on the way (!) which is why she’s chosen his birthday weekend (which coincides with her blowout breakup fight with long time boyfriend played by the writer and director [!]) to let him know.
Probably the most unbelievable thing about this movie is the fact that Ed offhandedly mentions that they’ve already made plans to see his family for his birthday and Liv cancels them sort of abruptly without very much thought. Maybe it’s supposed to be a send up to later when we find out that she’s–very unrepresentatively–the domestic abuser. It’s a little mind-bending that a movie could be so unaware of how toxic its own politics are on an issue so central to its plot–at this point I’m sure if Wife cared, she would whisper “Gone Girl” into my ear very softly (Update from May 28, 2022, Gone Girl’s anniversary and how it’s aged seem important here), but you cannot stop me from loving that movie and re-watching it on any plane that lets me.
There happens to be a strange disability plotline which reveals some unexamined Faulkner-esque animus towards folks with intellectual disabilities. There isn’t much merit in us hand-wringing about this nonsensical plot device, the local Peeping Tom that gets dragged by most of the characters in the film for being a fucking creep and taking from the government dole for his disabilities. The fact that he has such good camera video of domestic abuse and does nothing with it really bothers me, because wow, for someone who understands that “things are getting pretty bad,” he’s really unwilling to do the bare minimum which is show his mom the footage and have the authorities step in. His role, as far as I can tell, is to be simultaneously awkwardly in frame for scenes that don’t require his presence, but also to prowl around at night in order to put the fear of God into Ed while he smokes his cigars, and also to provide the lynch pin evidence needed in order to force Liv into a halting, awkward knife fight with her former best friend.
There’s also an extended, somewhat graphic monologue about a lesbian experience from college which serves no purpose except to illustrate that Liv is kind of an awful storyteller and has spent approximately nine months (read, baby time) dating this guy off an app without trotting this story out in their courtship. Genuinely really frustrated with this movie.
