Birthday Girl

Infobox_Film
name = Birthday Girl


writer = Tom Butterworth
Jez Butterworth
starring = Nicole Kidman
Ben Chaplin
director = Jez Butterworth
producer = Eric Abraham
Steve Butterworth
Diana Phillips
distributor = Miramax Films
released = February 1, 2002
runtime = 93 min.
language = English
budget = $13,000,000 | music = Stephen Warbeck
awards =
imdb_id = 0188453
"Birthday Girl" is a 2001 British Film Four-backed film featuring Nicole Kidman as a Russian mail-order bride. It is directed by Jez Butterworth and stars Ben Chaplin and Vincent Cassel.

Plot

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 and John can't believe his good luck. 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 his 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 trick. 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 her accomplices have fled. John gets dressed, and subsequently gets into a scrap with Nadia, who later reveals " [her] name is not Nadia," but Sophia.

Nadia gets into trouble after her boyfriend Alexei learns she is pregnant and John goes back to rescue her. They make common cause against the two Russian men, although John remains unsure whether or not he can trust her.

Cast

*Nicole Kidman as Sophia, alias Nadia
*Ben Chaplin as John Buckingham
*Vincent Cassel as Alexei
*Mathieu Kassovitz as Yuri

External links

*
* [http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/cosmo34/birthday_girl.htm Review of "Birthday Girl" by cosmopolis.ch]