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Review

Nicole Kidman delivers a wonderfully nuanced performance as a fragile widow who, on the eve of her engagement to Danny Huston, is confronted by a mysterious 10-year-old boy who claims to be her dead husband reincarnated and warns her not to remarry. Early suspicions of a cruel prank soon give way to cautious incredulity and, ultimately, to rapturous resignation: if this quiet moon-faced adolescent isn’t her dead husband reborn, then how could he possibly know so many intricate details about their private lives? Kidman is a revelation enduring painful emotional swings, and her fawnlike delicacy combined with her Mia Farrow-circa-Rosemary’s Baby crop-cut accentuates her sensitivity and anguish (and when it comes to turning on the gushing water works, she could give Ghost’s Demi Moore a run for her crying money). Speaking of Rosemary’s Baby, much of Birth recalls that film’s dream-like feeling of mesmerizing ambience and chilly isolation — courtesy of Harris Savides’ striking cinematography and Alexandre Desplat’s spellbinding musical score. The much-discussed kiss between Kidman and her pre-pubescent co-star is surprisingly chaste considering all the surrounding controversy, though a semi-nude asexual bathtub scene is quite fraught with tension.

 -- Steven D. Segal