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Tarfumes.com - Birthday Girl
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List Price: $9.99
Our Price: $9.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Miramax
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Vincent Cassel, Ben Chaplin, Mathieu Kassovitz, Kate Lynn Evans
Directed By: Jez Butterworth
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0717951010865
Format: Anamorphic
Label: Miramax
Manufacturer: Miramax
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Miramax
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2002-08-13
Running Time: 93
Studio: Miramax
Theatrical Release Date: 2002-02-01
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Editorial Reviews:
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The irresistible Nicole Kidman (MOULIN ROUGE, THE OTHERS) powers a sexy thriller where appearances can be deceiving and nothing ends as expected! A lonely and repressed bank employee, John Buckingham (Ben Chaplin, THE THIN RED LINE) desperately wants to meet the right girl. Then, through a Russian mail-order bride service, he is introduced to Nadia (Kidman), a quiet and attractive woman who doesn't speak English. After several sensual encounters, John's fondness for Nadia grows ... until the sudden arrival of Nadia's two gregarious cousins makes John realize that he's in over his head. Acclaimed by critics everywhere, this unpredictably entertaining hit will keep you guessing as it keeps you on the edge of your seat!
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: From Russia With Love
Comment: Ben Chaplin gives an underplayed and terrific performance as a regular guy in England who knows that everyone is not lucky enough to meet the love of their life by chance. To this end, he decides to help things along via the internet, sending for a Russian girl he hopes will be the one.
This Jez Butterworth directed film is full of surprises as it moves from a tentative romance to a crime thriller of sorts and back to romance again. It is all done so well that your interest never lags and you have absolutely no idea how this journey will end. It is presented in an off-beat manner, however, and it is easy to understand the great divide between those who love this film and those much less enthusiastic.
Nicole Kidman is sexy and wonderful as John's would-be bride Nadia. The awkwardness of their first meeting at the airport and the drive home, punctuated by Nadia throwing up, is perfectly captured. She speaks no english whatsoever and John considers sending her back at first. But Nadia is sexually agressive and wants to please John, each encounter better than the last. It is John's heart, however, which is finally given to Nadia, as he begins wearing the ring she gave him everywhere.
But their tentative romance takes an unusual turn when two of her pals from Russia show up to see her. Vincent Cassel as Alexi and actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz are very good as her seemingly harmless friends. An advance made by one of them towards Nadia, however, turns this into a crime thriller, John having to commit a crime to save his newfound love. Only too late does he realize something much more is really at the heart of the matter.
To reveal anything further might ruin the film's impact for those viewing this for the first time. Through all the shifts in genre, however, there is a certain mood of loneliness and anguish for love which runs through the fabric of this film like a soft yet unbreakable thread spun with great care by Chaplin's every guy performance and the increasingly haunted eyes of Kidman's Nadia, a window to her heart.
Set in England but actually filmed in Kidman's home country of Australia, she is quite fabulous in Birthday Girl. Those weary of paint by the numbers formula romances will find this refreshing and enjoy it more than others. It is definitely one of those films which either hits you just right or all wrong. A fabulous little film you'll have to decide on for yourself.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Western promises
Comment: In many ways this black comedy is Nicole Kidman's best movie. She is just wonderful as Nadia, a Russian mail order girlfriend ordered up by Ben Chapin, a very quiet, but controlling English bank clerk. Nicole dresses like a hooker, smokes like a chimney, can't speak a word of English but understands why he has brought her to England. She is sexually aggressive and quickly finds out Ben's character's pervey taste in sex.
Things come to a head on Nadia's birthday when Vincent Cassell shows up and nothing is what it seems. Great cast, good plot and satisfying ending.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Extremely Awkward
Comment: This movie was really awkward throughout. I don't know what else to say about it as the premise is obvious. It's not really extremely thrilling, but more like I said an extremely awkward movie. No one got killed really but, you'll want to avert you're eyes often during this movie, at the awkward mail order relationship.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing actors can't save this train wreck.
Comment: Birthday Girl starring Ben Chaplin and Nicole Kidman starts off as an appealing, strange love story but the film loses its edge 30 minutes in. Kidman is superb as always and Chaplin always gives a quiet, realistic perfomance but even their apparent talents can't spark a weak story. I could see the twist coming a mile away and there's nothing else worth talking about. Birthday Girl is anything but a blaze of glory. Skip it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Funnily absurd though maybe wise
Comment: A small funny film. It is totally incredible, unbelievable, impossible. But it is funny how an introverted masochist can become totally dependent and mesmerized, even hypnotized by a girl he hardly knows but who was able to get down into his phantasms. Of course it is a denunciation of the foolish deals you can get to on the Internet. You must not believe ten percent of what you're told there and never, ever, ever accept to tie up your hands in a way or another to someone or something or some organization you do not know personally. Most of their "businesses" there are in a way or another going to fool you and raid you. But here the chap deserves being the victim of such gangsters because he is not only naïve, he is absurdly silly. But then the film becomes funny because it ends up with the victim of the crooked business having the upper hand and ending up playing the same game with his victimizer and winning. One think is sure too. Security in English airports is not exactly what it should be, but I guess it's not better anywhere else in the world and even now they have tightened up all rules and regulations it is just fun to go through their procedures and foil them systematically. Then they have their vengeance by losing your luggage, a real plague on modern airports, and don't expect to get fair compensation. Or even confiscating a bottle opener or a can opener because it may be dangerous. I can see myself cutting my way through the side of the plane with a can opener. Funny, isn't it?
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
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