Starring Ashley Judd and Lauren Lee Smith. Rated 14A. Opens Friday, December 18, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

There’s certainly no lack of commitment in the locally shot Helen, starting with Ashley Judd’s utter lack of vanity as the title character, a music professor who suddenly loses her will to live. This despite a brand-new grand piano given as a birthday present by her adoring husband, a hunky lawyer played by E.R.’s Goran Visnjic. She’s also much loved by her teenage daughter (memorable Vancouverite Alexia Fast) from a previous marriage.

Something in that history explains a little of her sudden descent into sobbing, near-silent, and occasionally knife-wielding madness, but that’s news to hubby. After two full hours spent with sad, sad Helen, we don’t end up knowing much about her, either.

German-born writer-director Sandra Nettelbeck fared far better with her 2001 breakthrough, Mostly Martha, another eponymous tale of a talented, isolated woman whose salvation comes from risking real connection to other people. (It was later turned into No Reservations, a hideous Hollywood vehicle for Catherine Zeta-Jones.) Here, focusing on dreary people in a variety of drab B.C. locations, Nettelbeck offers little fluidity and even less wit or imagination.

Worse, the filmmaker displays only the most self-evident insights—medical, emotional, or philosophical—into her difficult subject. She compounds the problem by coupling Helen’s story with that of another depressive (CSI’s usually resourceful Lauren Lee Smith) who is even more self-destructive. Coincidentally, she’s also one of Helen’s students, although their mutual love of music is not part of the story. When these two live wires get together, there’s, well, a lot of sleeping in all day and thumping their skulls on nearby walls and windows. To be honest, if I wanted to learn something more substantial about stubborn head bangers, I’d go see that Anvil movie again.