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, a banker orders a mail-order bride Nadia from Russia on the internet. Later on, her cousins turn up to celebrate her birthday. After an altercation one of her cousins holds her hostage and demands a ransom from John. John is forced to steal from his bank where he has worked for ten years. After the ransom is paid, he learns that the hostage incident is a hoax. Nadia and her 'cousins' are her criminal accomplices, one of them being her boyfriend. Nadia gets into trouble after her boyfriend learns she is pregnant and John goes back to rescue her.

Trivia

When released in Russian-speaking countries, Nicole Kidman's voice had to be dubbed over (along with the English voices), as her Russian speech, while sounding convincing to many Anglophones, was actually very poor, and at times barely comprehensible.

External links