Birthday Girl
IfBirthday Girlis a far-fetched thriller, it's also a slice of  absurdist fun populated by some awfully interesting actors. Nicole Kidman  plays Sophia, a chain-smoking, mascara-smudged, wildly sexual mail-order bride  from Russia who answers an Internet plea for companionship from a lonely  British bank employee, John (Ben Chaplin). For a while, the two make a  startling and intriguing pair: she apparently speaks no English and he  naively frets over the veracity of the Web business that brought them  together. The gorgeous Kidman and sad-eyed Chaplin are briefly the engine of  their own unique movie, but then the other shoe drops. Sophia, obviously up to  something mysterious, is paid a visit on her birthday by two Russian  "cousins" (French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz and one of his own frequent  stars, Vincent Cassel, also seen inBrotherhood of the Wolf).  Suddenly, John's quest for a lover becomes a web of deceit and corruption.  Directed and cowritten (with his brother Tom) by Jez Butterworth,Birthday Girlis hampered a bit by sluggishness and insufficient character  development. But it is also original and strikingly entertaining.Tom  Keogh