Birthday Girl
Short description
John Buckingham is a quiet bank clerk living a routine life in a small English town. Lonely and unsuccessful in love, he turns to an internet agency that arranges introductions to women from Russia, and soon Nadia arrives in Britain to marry him. She speaks no English, despite what he was promised, and the two struggle to communicate, though a tentative closeness develops between them. That fragile arrangement is disrupted when two men turn up at John's home claiming to be Nadia's cousins, Yuri and Alexei, and their visit proves to have a purpose far beyond a family reunion, drawing John into a crime he did not choose.
Birthday Girl was released in 2001 and runs 93 minutes. It was directed by Jez Butterworth, who wrote the screenplay with his brother Tom Butterworth. Nicole Kidman plays Nadia, with Ben Chaplin as John and Vincent Cassel and Mathieu Kassovitz as the two visitors. The supporting cast includes Kate Lynn Evans and Stephen Mangan, among 22 credited performers, with 233 crew members credited.
Made on a budget of about 13 million US dollars, the film took roughly 16 million dollars worldwide. It holds a rating of 5.9 out of 10 on TMDB from around 449 votes, and a critics' rating of 5.7 out of 10 from 122 reviews, placing the two measures close together.
What's left behind the scenes
- Nicole Kidman turned to the Russian Embassy in Australia for help with learning the language. An employee of the Russian embassy worked with her on set.
- Filming began in May 1999, but was interrupted as early as July of the same year. Filming was subsequently interrupted again when Nicole Kidman broke a rib.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
