(movie review : BIRTH)

BORN AGAIN?
by David Hontiveros

You've been mourning for your spouse for the past ten years, and finally, you feel ready to move on. You have a fiancee who is devoted to you, and you've set the date for your wedding.

Then a ten-year old child comes into your home and your life, claiming to be your dead spouse, asking you not to get married. What do you do?

This is the predicament Anna (Nicole Kidman) finds herself in, in Jonathan Glazer's Birth. Taking this unconventional premise, Glazer is able to craft an elegant tale of loss and hope, of the possibility of finding love in the most bizarre of situations. He is also able to elicit yet another stunning performance from Kidman, who continues to mature as an actress after having left the blinding glare of being Mrs. Tom Cruise behind.

There is a definite European feel to Birth, with its studied and measured pace, and its muted emotions. Had this been a Hollywood production, the histrionics and manipulative tear-jerking scenes would have come fast and furious. As it is, there is only one real outburst of repressed anger and frustration; all else is even-toned conversations, teary eyes, and moments of silent, private agony, while the stirring score of Alexandre Desplat moves us to empathize with the characters' inner turmoil.

Though Birth could be considered a variation of the spouse-comes-back-from-the-dead scenarios depicted in films like Anthony Minghella's Truly, Madly, Deeply, or Steven Spielberg's Always, the tone and feel of Glazer's film is decidedly different. In this respect, it actually reminds me of Todd Haynes' Safe and Far From Heaven, both starring Julianne Moore, Kidman's co-star in The Hours, both equally measured in their staging and emotion.

There are no cathartic outpourings here, but rather, an almost gentle stirring of pain and longing, like a subtle undertow that, before you realize it, has drawn you out into the middle of the ocean. It doesn't drown you though; it just leaves you stranded.

That's one thing about Birth: the ambiguity.

Dialogue can get pretty sparse in the script (written by Milo Addica and Jean Claude Carriere), and since some actions of certain characters are pretty extreme, the lack of solid motivations could be a source of audience frustration. I'm all for ambiguity, so long as the audience is given enough clues and signposts to work with. In Birth, there is one major character action whose motivation is left hazy by story's end, and unfortunately, we don't know enough about the character to make any inferences, much less assumptions, regarding motivation, so that's a sad shortcoming of the film.

Also, I don't think we see enough of the reactions of the other characters to the return of the dead spouse (Sean) in the body of a ten-year-old. True, this is a love story of sorts, but why pepper the story with so many other characters if we don't actually see them as people? Certainly we know some characters are definitely on the side of, "No, he can't be your dead husband," but there are others who we can't really read properly. Lauren Bacall (who plays Kidman's mother) has one telling line of dialogue which could indicate why she takes her chosen stance on the matter, but we never really are certain what she thinks or feels, which is the way with most of the other characters. We're never truly sure if they just believe the ten year old Sean is lying, or they're unwilling to consider the impossibility of the situation.

For that matter, we don't see enough of the boy's parents to see how this strangeness is impacting on their lives. Not that I'm asking for a Hollywood cue-the-power-ballad moment when Sean's mother looks through a photo album wondering where her son has gone, to be replaced by this cold, detached stranger who claims to be some woman's dead husband. Certainly not that. But perhaps a little more parental presence would have helped the proceedings.

With all that said though, let me make it clear that I don't hate Birth. I don't even dislike it. I just don't think I actually love it. (Or maybe its ambiguity has rubbed off on me.)

It's a well-crafted film with a certain, assured pace that never falters in its storytelling, and in addition, has commendable performances. It is also able to pose questions, from the general-- Do you believe in reincarnation?-- to the provocative-- What would you do in this situation, given all that society says is taboo about romantic love between adults and children?

It's just that the emotional distance, coupled with the ambiguity, give it the sort of arty feel that makes the whole package a wee bit difficult to access. Call me a Philistine, but perhaps in this case, a little Hollywood may not have been such a bad thing.