Erotic thrillers are generally, well, erotic and thrilling. They blend the grey areas between pleasure and pain to construct something disturbing, hilarious, and provocative. Georgia Bernstein’s feature directorial debut, Night Nurse, contains exactly those elements to concoct a fascinating exploration into obsession, madness, and sexual power. Even with the combination of those ingredients, however, it falls short of what could have been a truly gripping tale.
Night Nurse opens with a transfixing phone call in which the camera, as it sails and glides over and around a woman’s body, matches the seductive nature of the monologue being spouted. “Grandpa, I can only talk for a few minutes. I was in an accident. I might have to go to jail. Wait by the phone. My lawyer is going to call. I love you.” The woman is sexually role-playing as a granddaughter, begging for help from her grandfather on the other end of the line. She’s intentional, present, and slightly seductive in her tone of voice.
Soon, we are introduced to Eleni (Cemre Paksoy), the newly-hired night nurse assigned to care for Douglas (Bruce McKenzie), who lives in a retirement community. Douglas, with his facade of dementia, is a con artist. He compels his personally assigned nurses in a sexually driven game that rests upon power, possession, and money. Getting them to call other elderly men in the community begging for $10,000 is how he pays for his extravagant lifestyle and fuels his twisted mind. Victims think their granddaughter is about to be hauled off to jail, so they always pay.
Reminiscent of a Lynchian constraint (think 1986’s Blue Velvet), the mesmerizing, piano-driven score, which fades in and out periodically, overlapped with purposeful, uncomfortable character close-ups, working in unison to create a deeply uneasy setting. The lines between reality and mania blur with ease. Eleni is quickly enveloped in Douglas’s schemes, gravitating from her first encounter, where she is pinned against the fridge, unsure if she wants to play along with the phone call, to obsessing over when the next ring will take place.
Paksoy’s coy performance draws you in, establishing a character caught between the tides of madness and manipulation. Her smile and wide eyes convey innocence, offering a distinguished interior performance, even if the script lets her down a bit.
Alongside her, McKenzie delivers a deranged but similarly distant performance as Douglas, toggling back and forth between mastermind con artist and absent-minded elder. When the story focuses on him specifically, it works with great effectiveness, but when it strays from him in particular, it feels as though his character arc stalls out time after time.
As it moves along, Night Nurse manages to weave its way through a complex relationship of Eleni, her job, and Douglas. How they all intertwine on different levels, and where the boundaries of each are. More importantly, what is driving the purpose of each in a forceful whirlwind is one of the key thematic explorations the movie offers. However, that doesn’t always translate to effective plot development or character growth.
Elani acts as a door through which we, the audience, are able to access such a strange and scintillating sexual subculture. Yet, for most of the movie, that’s all she is and nothing more. Disappointingly, her motivations, interests, and inner drivers are not brought into enough focus, leaving the movie to possess a feeling of wandering. Indicative of Douglas and his ever-changing gaze when it comes to nurses, he can sway to his sex-con game, but it still hinders the film from going to a deeper, more necessary, and engaging level.
The third act receives an infusion of life when a phone call gets taken too far, but it isn’t quite enough to revive the meandering mundanity that overtakes the psychosexual core of the movie. The technical aspects — score, framing, coloring, even the cult-like costuming — all prove that Bernstein has the sicko vision that people like myself are drawn to like a magnet. Unfortunately, the oddly-fitted ending and lack of narrative focus hinder what could have really been a movie for the sickos.
As a whole, Night Nurse plays better in theory than in practice, undercutting its sultry introductory energy with a lack of strong character choices. The ideas are there, yet they seem to fade away into the grey area between delusions and delight that the film tries so adamantly to live within.
Review Courtesy of Ethan Simmie
Feature Image Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Lindsey Kusterman