Birthdays: normally a time for happiness, fun, an opportunity for friends and family to get in contact with you via cards or phone calls wishing their regards but here; in Birthday Girl, there is none of that. John (Chaplin) is a guy whose life is plain and dull in his honest opinion; so bad in fact that he orders a girl over the internet to come and live with him; this premise is about as exciting as John's life is or was and for the record; doesn't make sense: he orders a 'mail bride' yet when she offers him the ring, he declines; there is no set up involving the company so we're sort of lead to believe that it doesn't exist but since it's on the Internet where millions can access it, it seems a little far fetched that Sophia or Nadia (Kidman) or whatever should show up on John's door when there are probably hundreds and hundreds of richer, more closer to home people she could go to.
Birthday Girl is a sort of hybrid of 2005's Derailed and Almodóvar's quirky film from 1990: Átame! The idea that a guy and a girl get involved when they shouldn't really be is toyed with in Birthday Girl since she's a mail order bride whereas in Átame, Banderas' character had been freed from a psychiatric hospital and in Derailed, the male and the female just hook up on a train Chaplin in this film even looks a little like Clive Owen. Unfortunately, Birthday Girl falls short of both films which were rather enjoyable in the end because of its lack of confidence. Derailed gets a little nasty once Vincent Cassel (who's also in this) shows up and that propels twists, turns and a good character study of Clive Owen's Charles Schine and what to do but Birthday Girl just seems to lack punch, it lacks violence and it lacks that hard-boiled, noir undertone, revenge feel that I really wish it had.
Birthday Girl has problems not only with its content and which way it's going to go but with its characters and their logic as well as the film's overall logic. Things turn a little ugly once Alexei (Cassel) and Yuri (Kassovitz) turn up and yet when John is suspicious, the police don't even seem to enter the equation over whether or not he should consult them likewise; when he is pressured into stealing money it is the fear of them doing something outrageous to Nadia that stops him from alerting the authorities and only because since her arrival, she's been supplying him with his sadomasochistic desires that I can only guess was the reason for getting her because he was on the verge of giving her up what with all the phone calls back to the website. This spawns two things: First, why didn't HE instigate the sadomasochism instead of leaving her to find out and secondly, did he really think they would harm their own cousin out of jealousy of his 'perfect life' with 'perfect house' and car? They'd been there a few days and not had any problem all of a sudden they are sick with envy and are going to kill their own cousin; like that'll do anything and without fooling around, when that scene happened it was so out of the blue that I questioned the authenticity. If they wanted him to steal money, they would've threatened him or perhaps HIS cousins.
Like I said; instead of developing into a revenge film, it flags and bothers about with further character development between John and Nadia, who by this time you rather dislike, before giving him lungs of steel in order to chase down a taxi just when he needs to. John, like the film, remains passive; the antagonists disappear for a day or two before popping up again just when they need to (they're stupid enough to hang around) and just when you need a violent, entertaining finale with a strong lead you get John trying to scare this hardened Russian con artist with a cigarette lighter shaped like a gun, it's pretty laughable. Birthday Girl doesn't have any stand out things about it but just potters along at a pace that is good but nothing great. I didn't feel anything for John except sorrow for him but I was doing that after five minutes. This could've been a great character study about how far one man will go (like Derailed did) to beat the odds but it ended up as a damp, nothing drama about a bunch of people who have nothing better to do.
Birthday Girl is a sort of hybrid of 2005's Derailed and Almodóvar's quirky film from 1990: Átame! The idea that a guy and a girl get involved when they shouldn't really be is toyed with in Birthday Girl since she's a mail order bride whereas in Átame, Banderas' character had been freed from a psychiatric hospital and in Derailed, the male and the female just hook up on a train Chaplin in this film even looks a little like Clive Owen. Unfortunately, Birthday Girl falls short of both films which were rather enjoyable in the end because of its lack of confidence. Derailed gets a little nasty once Vincent Cassel (who's also in this) shows up and that propels twists, turns and a good character study of Clive Owen's Charles Schine and what to do but Birthday Girl just seems to lack punch, it lacks violence and it lacks that hard-boiled, noir undertone, revenge feel that I really wish it had.
Birthday Girl has problems not only with its content and which way it's going to go but with its characters and their logic as well as the film's overall logic. Things turn a little ugly once Alexei (Cassel) and Yuri (Kassovitz) turn up and yet when John is suspicious, the police don't even seem to enter the equation over whether or not he should consult them likewise; when he is pressured into stealing money it is the fear of them doing something outrageous to Nadia that stops him from alerting the authorities and only because since her arrival, she's been supplying him with his sadomasochistic desires that I can only guess was the reason for getting her because he was on the verge of giving her up what with all the phone calls back to the website. This spawns two things: First, why didn't HE instigate the sadomasochism instead of leaving her to find out and secondly, did he really think they would harm their own cousin out of jealousy of his 'perfect life' with 'perfect house' and car? They'd been there a few days and not had any problem all of a sudden they are sick with envy and are going to kill their own cousin; like that'll do anything and without fooling around, when that scene happened it was so out of the blue that I questioned the authenticity. If they wanted him to steal money, they would've threatened him or perhaps HIS cousins.
Like I said; instead of developing into a revenge film, it flags and bothers about with further character development between John and Nadia, who by this time you rather dislike, before giving him lungs of steel in order to chase down a taxi just when he needs to. John, like the film, remains passive; the antagonists disappear for a day or two before popping up again just when they need to (they're stupid enough to hang around) and just when you need a violent, entertaining finale with a strong lead you get John trying to scare this hardened Russian con artist with a cigarette lighter shaped like a gun, it's pretty laughable. Birthday Girl doesn't have any stand out things about it but just potters along at a pace that is good but nothing great. I didn't feel anything for John except sorrow for him but I was doing that after five minutes. This could've been a great character study about how far one man will go (like Derailed did) to beat the odds but it ended up as a damp, nothing drama about a bunch of people who have nothing better to do.