CATRIONA PAUL at the movies.

FOR A truly awkward viewing experience, go see Birth. It’s an uncomfortable chiller, verging on the supernatural, set in New York. Nicole Kidman stars as a widow who becomes convinced her dead husband has been reborn. She gives a flawless performance, and Lauren Bacall makes a rare outing playing Kidman’s mom, but the cringe-worthy moments are what make the biggest impression.
 
Anna’s husband died ten years ago, suddenly, without warning. Still visibly and painfully fragile (a state emphasised by Kidman’s thinness), she is trying to move on and has become engaged to Joseph (Danny Huston). A couple of days after the engagement party, a 10 year old boy (Cameron Bright) turns up at her door claiming to be her dead husband, and telling her she must not re-marry. Reacting rationally at first, Anna is drawn in to believing the child’s claim when he reveals intimate details about the marriage.
 
In a preposterous move, the boy’s mother agrees to let him stay over at Anna’s apartment so she can “break the spell”. Instead, Anna becomes convinced the boy is telling the truth, and rather strangely, doesn’t object when young Sean gets into the bath with her.
  
The film offers little reprieve from the intensity of the relationship and Anna’s unhappiness, virtually silent save for the dialogue. The camera work captures a desolate, wintery New York reflecting Anna’s ongoing, unresolved grief and there are some beautiful scenes – most memorably those that open and close the film.
  
But, as a first-date-film, forget it. For any other movie moment, its ponderous pace and peculiar, unsettling subject are likely to discomfort rather than entertain.
  
BIRTH

Director: Jonathan Glazer
Writer:  Milo Addica and Jean-Claude Carriere
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Lauren Bacall, Cameron Bright, Danny Huston, Alison Elliot, Arliss Howard, Anne Heche, Peter Stomare,
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 100
Country: USA

© Catriona Paul, 2004