Birthday Girl

Plot synopsis:
John Buckingham (Ben Chaplin), a lonely St Albans bank clerk, orders a mail-order bride Nadia (Nicole Kidman) from Russia on the Internet. John is uncomfortable and shy, but Nadia is sexually bold. Though Nadia cannot speak English and John cannot speak Russian, they soon bond. Later on, a man she introduces as her cousin Yuri (Mathieu Kassovitz) and his friend Alexei (Vincent Cassel) turn up to celebrate her birthday. Alexei soon shows that he has a temper. After a violent altercation, Alexei holds Nadia hostage and demands a ransom from John. John has grown to care for Nadia and is forced to steal from the bank where he has worked for ten years. After the ransom is paid, he realises that he has been the victim of an elaborate con. Nadia, Yuri, and Alexei are criminals, and Alexei is actually Nadia's boyfriend.
John learns that the trio have carried out the same scam on men from Switzerland and Germany, among others. They take him prisoner, strip him down to his underpants, and tie him to a toilet in a motel. He eventually manages to free himself and quickly learns that Nadia has been left behind after Alexei discovered she was pregnant. John gets dressed and subsequently gets into a scrap with Nadia, who later reveals that she can indeed speak English and that her name is not Nadia.
John takes Nadia to turn her into the police - hoping to clear his name as a wanted bank robber. Ultimately, however, he sympathises with her and decides against it. He leaves her at the airport, where she is kidnapped by Alexei – who now wants Nadia to have the baby. John rescues her, tying Alexei to a chair. They make common cause against the two Russian men. Nadia informs John that her real name is Sophia. John, disguised as Alexei, leaves for Russia with Sophia.

Tags: flashback, home movie

Review:
Roughly one part crime drama to two parts offbeat love story, `Birthday Girl' is a nifty little British film that gives Nicole Kidman a chance to strut her stuff as an actress.
Here she gets to play a Russian `mail order bride' (though, of course, in the modern world she is actually ordered off the internet) who's come to England to start a new life with John, a mild-mannered banker unsuccessful in the ways of love.
Then just as John and Nadia seem to be forming a close relationship (literally bonding over bondage), complications arise when two of Nadia's bizarre `friends' from Russia suddenly arrive on the scene.To reveal more of the plot would be unfair to both the viewer and the makers of this film, since much of the movie's intrigue arises from the frequent turnabouts in the plot itself.
Kidman, who speaks nary a word of English in the first half of the film (and only with a heavy accent thereafter), does a beautiful job conveying both the toughness and the vulnerability inherent in this woman.
Basically, it's about a low-key British male who sends away for a Russian "mail order bride" who winds up, with the aid of two Russian male friends, providing a couple of big surprises.Ben Chapin and Nicole Kidman co-star, and are very good as are Vincent Cassel and Matthieu Kassovitz as Kidman's Russian cohorts.
This movie really woke me up, like it wakes up the main male character of this bravely different movie from his life slumber.This guy John (Ben Chaplin) leads his mediocre safe life of a bank teller in a small provincial English town, until the stunningly gorgeous, wild, girl-to-die-for Nadia (Nicole Kidman), ordered by email from Russia, enters his life to become his beloved wife, by Johns plan.
Although calm and emotionless on the outside, John becomes so interested in beautiful Nadia that instead of using the full refund policy of the matching service, he buys her a dictionary to start the communication process.What happens henceforth in the plot really shakes poor John from his slumber of a decently-paid safe-feeling clerk into a decision-making decently thinking action figure, giving the viewer a subliminal message "you would have probably acted likewise".Kidman, Cassel & Kassovitz make a great team acting Russians and they are almost indistinguishable from the real thing, "almost" only due to the slight accent present in their Russian dialogues, however slight enough to amaze a native Russian by the hard work done to get the words sound right.
Nicole Kidman proves her talent once again by playing a character quite different from the previous roles, at least from the cultural background.The pace of the film is fast and captivating, and you certainly are not ready to quit watching when the end titles appear, you rather feel that you're in the middle of the plot, and are left with a desire to see the sequel as soon as it comes out.My advice is to go out and get this film immediately and watch it and enjoy.
until two hours of write this."Birthday Girl" is a passionate movie that makes me fall in count, at the same time, that Nicole Kidman is one of the best actress (Besides she is pretty and intelligent) that i have ever seen.
Not only is her Russian accent when she speaks English effective, but there are times when she carries on long conversations in Russian and if you didn't know it was Nicole Kidman, you would never question her authenticity.
Although her background is questionable and her English is fragmented, she's great in bed, so he has no complaints.However when her "cousins" appear at his door a whole new world of deception and violence opens up for John, pulling him deeper and deeper under.The premise for the film is fairly good, but the overall execution is just so-so.
Nicole Kidman gives a really good performance (worthy of a better film) but Ben Chaplin is just OK.
Anyone could play the role, so he's kind of stuck in a rut.The movie is grungy, dark and feels independent - it's hard to imagine Hollywood royalty Nicole Kidman signing onto it, but she is really the reason this film remains interesting and engaging.
Which was a great shame, because it represents British rather than American humour and should have been shown in Britain first.Nicole Kidman looks stunning and is a totally convincing Russian.
Ben Chaplin is the Dustin Hoffman character from 'The Graduate', and 'Birthday Girl' has at least 4 scenes which remind the viewer of that 1960s classic (despite being a totally different story!).Sure it changes tack a number of times from comedy to black comedy to thriller to adventure - but it's memorable, moving and a weclome breath of fresh air compared to the average mega-budget blockbuster.See it with an open mind!.
Birthday Girl has a not too bad premise- good old English chum decides out of lonliness and maybe something else to order a mail order bride from Russia.
It turns out, his order is not quite what he wanted, but she (Nicole Kidman) seems like a nice enough wife, until not what was planned happens in a series of events getting the english chum and his russian bride on the run.
This is a clever, funny, sexy movie that starts as a romantic comedy and then becomes an edgy thriller.Nerdy bank clerk, John Buckingham (Ben Chaplin) lives in a semi-rural town not far from London.
When he orders a Russian mail order bride over the Internet, she duly self-delivers herself to the airport in the form of Nadia (Nicole Kidman).
But as John drives her home, he realises that Nadia can't speak English - or seems not to.Although John at first desperately tries to contact the aptly named 'From Russia with Love' marriage agency to cancel the deal, the language barrier becomes far less important when he discovers that Nadia is sexually adventurous and encourages him to indulge his every fantasy with her.Everything seems to be going perfectly for John until Nadia's Russian cousin, Yuri (Mathieu Kassovitz), and his friend Alexei (Vincent Cassel) turn up and overwhelm his life.
His performance is both funny and engaging.Pretty, sexy, and slim almost to the point of fragility, Nicole Kidman's Nadia looks vulnerable, but as we discover as the story unfolds, looks are deceiving.
It deals with a shy thirty something bank clerk named John (Ben Chaplin who subsequently didn't have a successful career) from St Albans , he has his small-town life exploded by the arrival of his Russian mail-order bride named Nadia (Nicole Kidman who shows her high range), she doesn't speak English , but the two begin to talk the international language anyway .
Good performances specially by Nicole Kidman as mysterious and sexy online mail-order bride who reportedly learned Russian language for the movie , as she went to the Russian Embassy in Australia for help in speaking Russian , she didn't work with any other coach on the set except the woman from the embassy.
Mild-mannered bachelor bank teller near London advertises for a Russian wife on the internet, and is disappointed when the young lady who shows up at the airport doesn't speak any English (she's a willing sport in bed, however); when two of her Russian buddies show up at his house, the man realizes he's been set up to rob his own bank, yet still feels a connection to this strange, sexy woman.
It was obviously a labor of love for the group, and they could not have found better leads than Nicole Kidman and handsome Ben Chaplin, both excellent in their roles.
As a comedy, they could have got away with a preposterous plot and the equally preposterous ending, but as a thriller, it simply fell flat.Nicole Kidman can successfully play the sort of girl who could be a real head turner if she didn't dress like trash, combed her hair, got washed, and stopped lighting one cigarette from another.
Though this film may not be much to shout about, Nicole Kidman carries the film on her own the rest of the cast could quite easily be forgotten, though Ben Chaplin does do quite a good job of Hertfordshire Life with shots of St Albans & Hemel Hempstead town centre depicting the true essence of the area.
What starts outlooking like a regular episode of the popular British TV series"Heartbeat" soon turns into a gritty gangster getaway action flick.Nothing truly memorable happens in this simple small film and thus ends-up as fairly decent weekend entertainment.
John (Chaplin) is a guy whose life is plain and dull in his honest opinion; so bad in fact that he orders a girl over the internet to come and live with him; this premise is about as exciting as John's life is or was and for the record; doesn't make sense: he orders a 'mail bride' yet when she offers him the ring, he declines; there is no set up involving the company so we're sort of lead to believe that it doesn't exist but since it's on the Internet where millions can access it, it seems a little far fetched that Sophia or Nadia (Kidman) or whatever should show up on John's door when there are probably hundreds and hundreds of richer, more closer to home people she could go to.Birthday Girl is a sort of hybrid of 2005's Derailed and Almodóvar's quirky film from 1990: Átame!
The idea that a guy and a girl get involved when they shouldn't really be is toyed with in Birthday Girl since she's a mail order bride whereas in Átame, Banderas' character had been freed from a psychiatric hospital and in Derailed, the male and the female just hook up on a train  Chaplin in this film even looks a little like Clive Owen.
Derailed gets a little nasty once Vincent Cassel (who's also in this) shows up and that propels twists, turns and a good character study of Clive Owen's Charles Schine and what to do but Birthday Girl just seems to lack punch, it lacks violence and it lacks that hard-boiled, noir undertone, revenge feel that I really wish it had.Birthday Girl has problems not only with its content and which way it's going to go but with its characters and their logic as well as the film's overall logic.
If they wanted him to steal money, they would've threatened him or perhaps HIS cousins.Like I said; instead of developing into a revenge film, it flags and bothers about with further character development between John and Nadia, who by this time you rather dislike, before giving him lungs of steel in order to chase down a taxi just when he needs to.
The presence of Armstrong and Miller is just another example of the uneven tone to the film  the comedians both seem to be trying to inject a small bit of humour by their delivery, but it doesn't work and sticks out a bit like a sore thumb.Overall this has enough going on to keep you watching but it doesn't do anything that well, producing an uneven affair that only gets a bit better in the second half where the focus appears to settle down.
I can't quite decide which is worse - the script or the directing.We're slowly introduced to John (Chaplin), a mild mannered (the mildest EVER) bank clerk looking for a mail order bride from a russian website.
Nicole Kidman gives it her all as a Russian mail-order bride (get it, because it's "funny") and despite her recognizable star power she is actually pretty convincing in the role.
This movie doesn't seem like the usual big-budget things you would expect to see Nicole Kidman.
England always made FILM worst, even I know that England is have many good artist.I'm very disapointed with this movie, the story line is bad with no emotion think.
I'm not a big Nicole Kidman fan, given that her movies seem to be on the quirky side, but the trailer for Birthday Girl caught my attention.
Nicole Kidman definitely does a good job in the movie, but her acting can't make up for a poor storyI guess my fiancee and I just expected more.
Really Loved It. When I saw Birthday Girl I liked it so much I set out to see every Nicole Kidman film I could, only to find all of them a disappointment compared to it.
Modern, original, romantic story.Very good acting of both Nicole Kidman and Ben Chaplin.Miss Kidman does a nice job in imitating a Russian accent.
Doesn't Gel. BIRTHDAY GIRL is an example of a great idea not making a very good film .
" A man sends off for a Russian bride and gets more than he bargains for " Hey that's a great premise but things go very wrong very quickly with the casting of Ben Chaplin as the meek and mild mannered bank teller .
She deserves an Oscar nomination for her latest film, Destroyer, whilst in a Birthday Girl she plays a Russian mail order bride with no little acting prowess.
We don't here.The acting is very good, with Nicole Kidman extremely convincing as a beautiful Russian girl, Vincent Cassel and Mathieu Kassovitz do a good job as Nadia's friends.I would like to have seen this overseen or rewritten by John Cusack or someone of that ilk.
By that time the film is narrowed down to creating a relationship between Nicole Kidman and Ben Chaplin.
At this time and during Nadia's birthday party, two of Nadia's Russian "cousins" show up on Johns door step and after two nights sleeping on his floor, demand more than he had bargained for.The film was promoted either as a tense thriller, a romantic crime drama or even as a comedy/thriller .
The most outstanding (and best part of the film) coming from the excellently presented Nadia/Sophia played by Nicole Kidman.
The different elements she gives makes her warm and likable; even though she is a crook and a swindler, you want her to be happy and even fall in love with John as the film strives to an end.The two Russian accomplices ; Yuri and Alexei played by the French actors Vincent Cassel and Mattieu Kassovitz are also well done.
Lastly, Ben Chaplin looks relaxed, focused and delivers the comical tone with ease.After watching Birthday Girl, it was not what I expected and the appearance of the film was unforeseen.
Good acting is what makes watching this movie not a waste of time despite the poor script.
Nicole Kidman plays a Russian mail-order bride, silent or speaking only Russian for most of the movie.
I can understand the decision for the main part - the movie needs a name in the credits and Nicole Kidman is a very good marketing product, but there are really very good Russian actors out there, so you wouldn´t have to cast two French guys, who are very good actors (I like them both very much), but struggle to speak Russian.
Ben Chaplin (no relation to the legendary comedian) is a shy Englishman who hooks up with a Russian mail order bride (Nicole Kidman).
Strange to see Nicole Kidman in this film as it doesn't particularly seem like her style.She does well however, and her name I'm sure added a lot of weight to the film, which few may have heard of.Ben Chaplin stars opposite her, and convinces as a Middle-England bank clerk who is fed up with life alone, and so orders Kidman's Russian bride.
Great acting ; clever dialogue ; nice plot changes ; not liked by the mass market ; AND NICOLE KIDMAN !!!!
Any Nicole Kidman fan will love it,and any fan of interesting films should like it a lot.
It's interesting to listen to key points in the plot (in Russian), and not know what they are talking about.Nicole Kidman, who plays "Nadia" is great at speaking Russian throughout the film, until...
Nicole Kidman is actually quite good, as is her sad new husband, Ben Chaplin (god!
This is a pretty predictable movie, it's not quite a thriller, it's more like a dark comedy, I would give Birthday Girl 6.5/10.
How could Nicole Kidman's great acting skills be wasted in such a ridiculous movie like "Birthday Girl"?.
After making my favorite movie "the Portrait of a Lady", which is a movie that shows why I love Nicole Kidman, I never thought she'd do something as ridiculous and bad as "Birthday Girl".
There is nothing great about it, the plot is mediocre and uninteresting, the acting is good, but only because of Ms Kidman's Russian accent, which was somewhat convincing.
Overall, the movie is not interesting, it really doesn't have much going for it and there is nothing that can save this story, but Nicole's performance, although I never thought she'd have the nerve to do something like this.
The movie unfolded well, it started out as a sex film that turned into a surprising love story.
The movie stars Nicole Kidman (who seems to be getting sexier as she gets older, or am I the only one who thinks so) as a Russian Mail order bride.
We pity the poor British guy who was suckered into this little game while at the same time wanting to slap him for being so naive.There are also a few laughs to make the movie easy to watch and a few interesting shots of Kidman (including one really interesting shot of her bare backside).I give the film a thumbs up..
However she did a great job as the wild girl who really has a soft heart, Ben is terrific in this character displaying two totally different elements to the personality of John.I thought they could have emphasised the more romantic elements of the movie but overall it's a good watch.
If you want to spend a good time and admire the beauty and the  talent of Nicole Kidman go and see that movie which deserves 7 out of 10 .Sputtosi.