TRUE LOVE'S FATE

Birth ***1/2

Adding to her impressively diverse resume, Nicole Kidman plays a woman struggling to deny that a 10-year-old boy might be the reincarnation of her dead husband. This second feature by the director of Sexy Beast begins as an uncanny tribute to the gift of true love, but grows to suggest that it's as much a tragic curse. (Hitchcock's Vertigo is certainly an antecedent.) It's an unwieldy concept, and for all his ambition, director Jonathan Glazer hasn't completely licked it. The characterization of the boy isn't completely coherent, for one, and on some level the film never completely transcends the feeling of being a mere technical exercise (Kidman's very mannered tour-de-force performance included). And that's first assuming that this metaphysically minded movie isn't insurmountably literal for your tastes. (If you can't stomach the mere notion of Kidman sharing a chaste but cozy bath with her young costar that's a pretty good litmus test.) But Birth is certainly not a gimmick, nor is it cheap or sensational. Kidman and Glazer are really trying to get at the root, and it's filled with moments that are audaciously exciting. It's a tremendous highwire act, and as such it has a kind of energy that you usually only expect from the danger of live theatre. On a practical level, it's only something of a failure because it raises the bar so ludicriously high. Would you be surprised to learn that it's all adapted from a script by Bunuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carriere?