John Buckingham, Ben Chaplin, is one of those meek suburban types who works in a bank in St Albans. He would be into sex if he could be but there\'s no-one around, so he contacts an internet agency called From Russia With Love and orders an English-speaking, non-smoking bride. When Nadia, Nicole Kidman, arrives she\'s neither. John in a meek polite way tries to cope with the situation but decides that maybe Nadia\'s too much for him, but when Nadia discovers his porn collection and sets about fulfilling his fantasies things change. Then, on her birthday, her cousin Yuri, Mathieu Kassovitz, and his friend Alexei, Vincent Cassel, arrive and things begin to get very complicated.
It\'s an unsettling film in some ways, it\'s part romantic comedy, part thriller, part crime caper. It\'s been nicely written by Butterworth working on the screenplay with his brother Tom, another brother Steve was co- producer. I think it\'s Nicole\'s best performance since To Die For, she\'s terrific as the manipulative Nadia and she\'s nicely balanced by Chaplin.
Kassovitz and Cassel are great mates and they work really well together on screen. Overall Birthday Girl is very easy to enjoy, but you may come away feeling that perhaps the whole doesn\'t work as well as some of the parts.
Share
