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Birthday Girl
**
Cinema Releases - June 28, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA-UK.
90 minutes. Directed by Jez Butterworth. Written by Jez Butterworth, Tom
Butterworth. Starring Nicole Kidman, Ben Chaplin, Vincent Cassel, Mathieu
Kassovitz, Kate Lynn Evans, Stephan Mangan.
"Birthday Girl" stars Ben Chaplin
as a lonely bank clerk from St. Albans who sends off for a Russian mail-order
bride played by Nicole Kidman. He tries his best to make things worthwhile,
but she doesn't seem to speak any English except for the word 'yes'. Then
arrive two old friends of Kidman's, played by Vincent Cassel and Mathieu
Kassovitz. And things happen that I will not reveal.
The mail-order bride situation in itself is pretty
fascinating. What kind of person would order one? Or be one? What are the
hopes, motivations and fears of people on either side? It's a pretty odd
arrangement, so what logic helped them make their final leaps into it? And
does it feel strange, or unsavoury, or do the participant's ways of viewing
the world make such questions irrelevant?
This movie is a light comedy, but it could still
have pondered such questions by letting its characters behave, and by revealing
their personalities through reactions to situations. Instead, the domestic
scenes of "Birthday Girl" keep Kidman a mystery because the film wants to
have twists later on. All that we can perceive about Chaplin is that he's
unsure about how to react to Kidman, and speaks very slowly around
her.
There are pointless and distracting cameos from
sitcom stars in place of genuine wit. Ben Miller appears as a hotel clerk,
and thinks that an expression of blank cynicism is the same thing as humour.
Sally Phillips stars as some kind of aerobics guru, in scenes that satirise
the bank at which Chaplin works, its frustrating corporate structure, and
its sideline PC trust exercises. What does this have to do with the story,
and besides, do political correctness and self-help actually need to be sent
up any more?
By the time "Birthday Girl" moves into its second
half, it's content to be a series of chases and shouting matches, so the
film never gets a chance to come alive. We can't see the end of the story
from the beginning, which I suppose is something, but the plot movements
are not as interesting as personality would have been. This is not a bad
film, just a bland one -- it contains amusements like Chaplin's car making
a funny noise, which make us smile, but little else.
Chaplin is dull and passive, but that suits his
character, and although at times he seems to be the reason for the material's
lack of life, perhaps he is not. Kidman is surprisingly convincing as a Russian
girl who has seen hard times; she doesn't go for easy comic payoffs or ethnic
impersonations, and does her best to conjure an aura of interest that the
screenplay doesn't even suggest. The players come across like people, but
we're never given an opportunity to understand them. Where have they been
and what have they dreamt? How sad are they, or not? Are we supposed to like
them, feel sorry for them, feel uneasy, or what? In the last scene, someone
asks, "What will happen?" Something more meaningful already should
have.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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