Kidman plays Nadia, a meek, dark haired, Russian, grunge beauty who answers the Internet calling of John Buckingham’s (Ben Chaplin’s) request for a mail-order bride. John is looking for an English speaking woman with whom he can talk to. What John finds at the airport a few weeks later is a knockout fluent in Russian, not in English. John, determined there has been some sort of mistake repeatedly calls the Web site to have Nadia deported. No one answers his calls and he is left with a confused and sad looking bride who keeps trying to give him a wedding ring to wear.
While John is away at his job working at a local bank, Nadia comes across John’s stash of bondage magazines. Nadia cleverly entices John into his sexual fantasies and eventually she wins him over physically. Somehow her not being able to speak English no longer matters to John.
That is until Nadia claims on day it is her Birthday and mysteriously Nadia’s two “cousins,” Alexei (Vincent Cassel) and Yuri ( Mathieu Kassovitz) show up on the doorstep of Johns home.
Nadia is more than ecstatic to see her cousins. John, wanting to resist their arrival lets them stay because he sees that Nadia is the happiest she’s been since her arrival.
Alexei and Yuri begin to outwear their stay with odd behavior and a tendency to hit on Nadia. One night John has had it with them and tells them this will be their last night staying in his home. However, the cousins never leave.
Alexei takes Nadia hostage and threatens to hurt John’s new bride if he doesn’t rob the bank he works for the next day. Armed with two guitar cases John shows up at the bank the next day, walks straight to the vault and fills the cases full of stolen money. As he exits the bank for the getaway car (his own meager little car) takes off in hot pursuit for a hiding place.
What John didn’t plan for is being taken hostage after he stole the money for Nadia’s “cousins.”
Most bank robbing story lines are pretty cookie cutter, although Birthday Girl leaves you in a state of awe as the money changes hands and the three Russians betray each other and John even tries to take his own wife to jail out of anger for being scammed.
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