From the moment we meet luxury nursing-home patient Douglas (Bruce McKenzie), we feel something is up. The knowing sparkle in his baby-blue eyes; his slender gold chain and tufts of chest hair poking out of his medical jammies; his low, measured drawl — is it the voice of a former player who knows his mind is fading, and is playing sly to save face? Or is he perfectly in control of his faculties? In Georgia Bernstein‘s gratifyingly perverse debut “Night Nurse,” this ambiguity upends the usual patient-caretaker dynamic, especially since Douglas’ new doe-eyed nurse Elemi (Cemre Paksoy) seems especially vulnerable to being controlled.
An erotic thriller with the glassy-eyed eeriness of a Peter Strickland joint, and with the kind of slippery sexual sensibility you might find in a Catherine Breillat provocation, “Night Nurse” premiered in Sundance’s experimental NEXT section this past January, and now opening in limited theaters across the U.S. It’s a gloriously deviant oddity, best suited to niche audiences drawn to atmosphere over plot, as Bernstein’s script achieves more as a woozy dreamspace than a neat crime story.
In any case, the scheme shaping the film’s stakes is introduced from the get-go, in a sultry opening credits scene where the camera glides over curly telephone cords and grasping hands in close-up. Over these images, two voices languidly recite what sounds like a roleplaying script, in which a desperate girl appeals to her grandpa for money. Later, we find out that this dialogue is a version of a game (albeit with real consequences) that Douglas plays with his nurses.
