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Today, 14 October 2008

» Metropolis Mania

Yesterday, 13 October 2008

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The very thought of a mail-order Russian bride is enough to make you stand back and think "weird concept". But it's more than just a concept — the practice of Russian women joining agencies, internet or other, whereby they are offered up as "brides" to willing foreign men (usually terminally single) is alive and well.

And while it might seem pretty damned weird to us, to the hundreds if not thousands of Russian girls desperate to escape their lives and start anew with a nice English boy in a land of plenty, well....

This is the basis of director Jez Butterworth's (who also wrote the screenplay with his brother Tom) off-beat, romantic comedy-thriller BIRTHDAY GIRL.

The film stars the sensationally versatile Nicole Kidman as Nadia, the Russian girl whom a shy bank clerk, John (Ben Chaplin - THE THIN RED LINE), has 'sent' for.

Expecting her to be English-speaking, even if somewhat broken (that's what it said on the agency website!), John is mortified when he realises she can't understand he word he speaks even as he finds her tired and scruffy yet kittenishly sultry appearance beguiling.

Thus begins the quirky tale of appearances, illusion and deception — what you see is not always what you expect... or get. John's colleagues at the bank see a boring, painfully ordinary man from whom they would never expect any surprises. How wrong they are!

John certainly doesn't get what he expects with Nadia, either. Their initial period together is tense and awkward as John tries in vain to get hold of the agency with his qualms. He watches her voyeuristically as she demurely knits a jersey, and feels encouraged, flattered, when he sees her struggling with the English-Russian dictionary he gave her in a bid to help their communication. Could he... is he... developing a bit of a thing for her?

A bold sexual advance Nadia makes on a shocked John results in language-barriers all but disappearing. There are some pretty raunchy scenes in the movie, and needless to say, John soon changes his mind about sending his "bride" back to Russia!

There are also a couple of rather violent scenes when Nadia's wild Russian friends, played by Vincent Cassell (DOBERMANN) and Mathieu Kassovitz (AMELIE), arrive on her birthday. From here, all hell breaks loose as John realises he's been taken for the ride of his life...

The acting in BIRTHDAY GIRL is wonderful, as much from Chaplin as from Kidman - though it has to be said that a dark-haired, de-glamourised Nicole speaking fluent Russian is quite something to behold!

It's really refreshing when a film like this comes along every now and again, and it's equally refreshing that a mega star such as Kidman can appear in a film that is so un-Hollywood in every possible way! Yes, its unconventional subject matter may make it a strange film, but it's also warm, funny and incredibly sharp - reason enough to give BIRTHDAY GIRL a try.