Harry, He's Here to Help

Michel (Lucas) is having one hell of a trip. There aren't police, car chases and near escapes, just him, his wife, and their three demanding daughters - and a lack of air conditioning. A chance meeting in a service station toilet reunites him with an old school friend, whom he doesn't recognise intially. Anybody else would suspect bad things afoot, but Harry (Lopez), whose motto is "Help out wherever you can," is so charming that soon he and his girlfriend Plum (Guillemin) have joined the family vacation.

Bad things are afoot, of course, and it soon turns out that Harry's affable magnetism is mixed with fury so barely repressed that it boils over rather too easily. Michel is slow to realise this though, and slowly suspicion begins to build.

Harry, He's Here to Help has one of the lousiest titles in living memory. Fortunately, things get better from then on. A mix of dry wit, dark humour and unnerving suspense, the film is highly original despite its nods to Hitchcock. The shocks in the film come not from enormous explosions and spectacular stunts, but refreshingly from psychological twists.

This makes the performances crucial. Lopez is excellent, turning in a performance just understated enough, and Lucas ably demonstrates that film acting is more about what you don't do, but it is Guillemin who quietly steals the film by playing Plum as sexy but not stupid in a change from the usual Hollywood heroines.

The film is expertly polished, with violence and morbid humour blended effortlessly into a thriller that has something rare in entertaining films: intelligence.

Katherine Shaw