JONATHAN Glazer loves crescendos, all quiet, then all hell. Remember that Guinness advert with the horses bursting out of the sea froth? Or Ray Winstone's perfectly peaceful poolside moment on the Costa del Crime being shattered by a crashing rock in Sexy Beast?

Birth, the British film-maker's second movie, opens with the stealthy trudge of a runner through the parkland snow. The scene goes on for ever; the runner starts retracing his steps. Where's Paula Radcliffe when you need her? Suddenly, he drops to his knees, quite dead. This is the essence of Glazer, a long lead-in and then a short, sharp jolt: sometimes visual, sometimes a cutting comment as sharp as a shard.

Ten years on, young widow Anna (gamine Nicole Kidman in a pixie cut) has given in to concerted pressure to marry a dull stuffed-shirt, Joseph (Danny Huston). Manhattan's moneyed Upper East Side is delighted, but the omnipresent orchestral swell of Alexandre Desplat's chilling score tells you trouble is afoot.

An eerie young boy keeps hanging about outside her Central Park apartment. His name is Sean (Cameron Bright), the name of her late husband; he is ten, and he is adamant he is Sean's reincarnation. Bright's secretive, brooding eyes have a way of burning you, unnerving you, and scaring all around him, all except Anna's mother (a glacial Lauren Bacall) and Anna herself.

Pale, diaphanous and still grieving, Anna cares not a jot what Manhattan society will say. Feelings unfrozen by Sean, she finds life and love-affirming reason for his return, even in the form of a young boy. Scenes will discomfit you, partly because the dialogue is not quite up to the mark in Glazer's quest for black humour: maybe it needed one of those ancient Greek tragedians to handle the psychological undertow.

Birth had a troubled birth, with re-shoots, and the cryptic open ending should be more chilling, and yet Glazer has shot this winter's tale of grief and isolation with a rare sense of beauty. Great film to look at, especially Kidman's face in a long, long bath scene with echoes of Stanley Kubrick's menacing, maddening cinematography, but not so great in the storytelling.

Updated: 16:05 Thursday, November 04, 2004