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Blog by Don Kennedy

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Helen

Helen has Ashley Judd returning to Vancouver for the first time since the late 90’s when she spent a lot of time filming in Canada. Like last years Bug she puts on an acting clinic in another film that portrays the dark recesses of minds going off the rails. As Helen she’s a gifted music professor on her second but serenely romantic marriage to the suave David (ER’s Goran Visnjic) who has way more compassion than you’d expect from a lawyer. They share their loving home with Julie (Vancouver’s Alexia Fast) Helen’s teenage daughter from her first marriage until the darkness of clinical depression casts a pall over their perfect relationship. As Helen slips further and further into a catatonic abyss she distances herself from her family at the same time sharing a mental affinity with Mathilda (another Vancouverite Lauren Lee Smith) one of her students who is also psychologically fragile. Perhaps it’s important that films are made to enlighten about a subject easily swept under the carpet and to illustrate that there’s no quick fix for mental illness and the difference that support can make. However as a night out at the movies, the subject of depression can be, well, depressing.

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