Birthday Girl

Taking their cue from the Baldwins, Wilsons and Arquettes, the Butterworths are fast becoming Britain's very own filmmaking family extraordinaire. Consisting of director Jez, writer Tom and producer Stephen, the Butterworths first burst onto the celluloid scene in 1997 with the much overlooked Brit gangster flick Mojo, and now they re-enter the fray with their quiet suburban comedy-cum-thriller, Birthday Girl.

Set in St Albans, Birthday Girl tells the story of John (Ben Chapman), an easy-going lovelorn banker with a desire for a wife and a penchant for the Internet. He takes a chance on ordering a mail-order bride from the apt titled website 'From Russia with Love'. As John so elegantly puts it: "Where does it say you have to meet the love of your life in the supermarket?"

And when John first meets up with his beautiful and enigmatic Russian bride to be at the airport it seems that Nadia (Nicole Kidman) could indeed be the love of his life. But John fast learns that whichever path you choose, the course of true love never runs smooth and it's definitely not something you can sort out with a simple phone call. What's more, when Nadia's cousin Yura (Mathieu Kassovitz) and his friend Alexei (Vincent Cassel) turn up unexpectedly to help celebrate her birthday, John's perfectly routine existence is pummelled out of all proportions as he finds himself forced into an adventure involving, in no particular order, bizarre acts of sado-masochism, inept bank robberies, skinny dipping, forest barbeques, torture with kitchen utensils and discussions about the musical Cats.

Birthday Girl could have been a lot better. Written, directed and produced by Brits, it is set in Britain and the cast and crew are mainly British. But, on closer inspection one finds that, like so many other British films that don't do particularly well on either side of the pond, Birthday Girl suffers desperately from a lack of any real identity. It is a film, like Rancid Aluminium (2001) and a host of other failures before it, that tries too hard to be British, or to be more exact, to be what foreigners think of as British. To include all that eccentric British reserve, that sexual embarrassment, that Edwardian softness, that stiff upper lip. In short, to include those things that are no longer a part of what makes us British.

It smarts to admit it, but it would seem that the Butterworths would do well to take a page or two out of Guy Ritchie's book, in that, they'd be better off making British films for a British audience and not worry about what our American cousins will think. It is surely no coincidence that the British films that have been most successful in America have generally done well in the UK first. Americans, not as stupid as some would have us think, seem to have no real desires to be spoon fed from across the water with trashy, oversimplified British stereotypes. If anything they surely get enough of that from their own cinema.

But if little else, the Butterworths have certainly pulled off a minor coup in the casting stakes. Throughout the film Nicole Kidman gives an assured performance as the flawed, but immensely likable Nadia. Cassel and Kassovitz are also great as the larger than life Russian con men and both French superstars are always a pleasure to watch. Chapman, on the other hand, hasn't played an Englishman for a while and it shows. Sadly, his character seems to lack the kind of realism that Chapman once effortlessly pumped into BBC 2's Game On. But, all in all, he doesn't do such a bad job with what he is given.

Birthday Girl is certainly not the worst British film you'll see this year. However, it lacks sufficient originality to warrant a wholehearted recommendation. For the most part, it is a paint by numbers affair and apart from a very strong central performance from Kidman it seems to run almost entirely on auto pilot, which is a real shame when a low budget British film has assembled such a respected and diverse cast as this.

Reviewed by Simon Jones