Boxing Helena
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Boxing Helena is the 1993 debut feature film by Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David Lynch. The film stars Sherilyn Fenn as the titular Helena and Julian Sands.
Plot
The movie follows a surgeon whose growing obsession with a woman leads him to hold her captive in his home after she suffers a car accident and to amputate her limbs to keep her captive.
Nick Cavanaugh is a lonely Atlanta surgeon obsessed with Helena, with whom he had one intimate experience, but she disdains him. After she suffers a high-grade tibial fracture in a hit-and-run motor vehicle collision in front of his home, Nick kidnaps Helena and surreptitiously treats her in his home, amputating both her legs above the knee. Later, after she tries to choke him, Nick amputates her arms above the elbow.
Though Helena is the victim of Nick's kidnapping and mutilation, she dominates the dialogue with constant ridicule of his shortcomings. But this was all a dream: Helena awakes in the hospital with all her limbs intact.
