Boos for Nicole's Birth

A volley of boos, and some scattered applause, greeted Birth, Nicole Kidman's controversial new film at the Venice Festival in which she plays a young widow who falls for a 10-year-old boy thinking he's the incarnation of her dead husband.

Some thought British director Jonathan Glazer's film - a total contrast to his Sexy Beast - was one of the best on view. Others that its story was pretentious and unlikely. Hence the boos.

Kidman plays a young widow on the verge of a second marriage who is suddenly disturbed by the entry into her life of the boy (the angelic-looking Cameron Bright) who insists he is her dead husband.

At first she finds the situation merely intriguing but soon her enduring love for her husband allows her to half believe the boy.

The more he follows her, the more she wills herself to imagine something strange is happening.

Eventually she throws caution to the winds and allows him to stay the night at her apartment. There is a chaste kiss on the lips and a sequence where he gets into her bath. Nothing more than a staring contest ensues and sex isn't even implied.

Meanwhile her new fiancé (Danny Huston), sensing he may be losing her if not to the boy at least to the memory of her lost love, finds the situation intolerable. And in one of the film's strongest scenes he attacks the boy as the family assemble to celebrate the engagement.

The rest of the family, including her mother (Lauren Bacall) and her sister (Alison Elliott) desperately try to get rid of the child too. But his knowledge of the details of her husband's life is uncanny.

How can the widow refuse the chance to experience again the love she felt for him?

The film is almost the opposite of Sexy Beast in style. It is beautifully shot by Harris Savides, written with some skill by Jean-Claude Carriere (who penned Bunuel's Belle De Jour) and Milo Addica (who wrote Monster's Ball) and has a superb score from Alexandre Desplat which adds considerably to the atmosphere.

As for the acting, Kidman expresses first her doubts and then her yearning with some force and Cameron Bright is a presence that's infinitely superior to that of the usual Hollywood brats. There is no false sentiment involved at all, even if the ending of the film, which one shouldn't give away, doubles back on itself disturbingly.

The film is neither a horror story nor a thriller but more of a psychological drama, the premises of which you either accept or not. But does it work? Those who booed clearly didn't think so.