Mail-order mayhem
Birthday Girl is eager to please
REVIEW
BIRTHDAY GIRL
Nicole Kidman, Ben Chaplin, Mathieu Kassovitz and Vincent Cassel
Directed by Jez Butterworth
Opens Friday, February 1
Check listings
The press kit for Birthday Girl used the words "quirky," "off-beat" and "hilarious" so many times that the movie was almost guaranteed to be stale and tiresome. I am therefore stunned (and suitably humbled) to be using the following words in this review: funny, unusual, well-written.
John Buckingham (Ben Chaplin) is a shy, English bank teller who orders a Russian bride through the Internet. When Nadia (Nicole Kidman) arrives, John is dismayed to discover that his new wife is a chain-smoker who can't speak English, dresses eccentrically and is more or less the opposite of the mate he was expecting. Nadia is eager to please, however, and after a shaky start the unlikely match looks like it might work. Then Nadia's "cousins" Yuri (Mathieu Kassovitz) and Alexei (Vincent Cassel) arrive, and before he can say "Zhivago," John is forced to rob his own bank and go on the lam.
It's a silly premise, but John and Nadia are solid characters and the script resists all the usual romantic comedy stupidity. It doesn't mistake sex for love, or affection for respect, or fighting for foreplay. At heart, it's a story about friendship developing between two people who have underestimated each other. Each character is guilty of using the other, and the movie doesn't encourage the audience to take sides. John is victimized, but more by his own gullibility and naiveté than by Nadia's deviousness.
This film isn't perfect – the cousins are inconsistent and at times seem more like plot tools than characters – but why complain? In a genre cluttered with love stories that range from insulting to actively unpleasant, Birthday Girl is welcome treat. |
