WATCHING the gamine Nicole Kidman, hair newly dark, eyes particularly blue, voice as Russian as vodka, you would be entitled to think all your birthdays have come at once. Giving Tom Cruise his marital P45 has done wonders for the Australian, now officially the Kylie of the silver screen. She has not been this hot yet cool, so on the edge, so desperate to please but serve her own needs since her wickedly twisted portrait of a fame-obsessed weather-girl in Gus Van Sant's To Die For.

Part of the delight here is that you have to wait to see her. Instead, in his follow-up to Mojo, British writer-director Jez Butterworth's romantic comedy-thriller opens with Ben Chaplin reprising Steve Coogan's bottled-up loser role in The Parole Officer, as if played by Hugh Grant at his most awkward and self-conscious.

Chaplin is negative nerd John Cunningham, a boring St Albans bank clerk with more solitude than attitude, a misfiring sports car and a blank love life, until he recklessly orders up a mail-order bride from Russia via a website.

Like so many purchases over the Internet, Nadia (Kidman) is not what John thought he ordered. From Russia with no English, she smokes like a beagle and seems to be away with the gothic fairies.

Just when he decides to send her back well within 28 days, he discovers she is fully qualified in the international language of love-making, wrist tourniquets and all, her lessons in sexual gratification learnt in a crash course in S&M magazines.

Stop, that's enough kinky-Kidman, wish-fulfilling naughtiness. Time for Birthday Girl to change tack and explain its title.

Who should arrive for her birthday party but her boisterous Russian "cousin" (Matthieu Kassovitz) and his scary friend (Kassovitz's fellow Frenchman Vincent Cassel). Uninvited, not wanted by John, and soon to outstay their lack of welcome, they have a dark ulterior motive, involving money extraction, as Butterworth sets about playing tricks on his audience.

Writing with his brother Tom, Butterworth's dialogue is not always as clever or quick on its feet as the plot, but there is a pleasingly nasty streak, worthy of Harold Pinter, to counter the erratic suspense and rising tide of sentimentality that leads to the inevitable finale.

This undulating, undemanding movie's winning hand is its quirkiness, typified by casting two Frenchman and an Aussie as Russians and asking the handsome Chaplin to be as plain as rice and devoid of charm.

As for the Russian-speaking Kidman, Birthday Girl is a gift of a male-fantasy role, a diverting sabbatical from the tough stuff.

Move over Anna Kournikova.

Updated: 09:56 Friday, June 28, 2002