Two of the most elemental desires humans possess are the need to be cared for and the need to be needed. Georgia Bernstein’s unsettling directorial debut focuses on how warped and perverted those desires become when they’re taken to their insatiable extremes.
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Bernstein’s provocative, disquieting psychological thriller confines itself to a restrictive retirement community where resident Douglas (Bruce McKenzie) engages in a twisted and dangerous thrill-seeking game that involves phone scamming at-risk older people with memory-loss issues. When a peculiar new nurse named Eleni (Cemre Paksoy) arrives on the job, she is a newcomer escaping her own past and more than susceptible to Douglas’s erotically charged charms. Soon she’s serving as the lure or “the voice” in duping the vulnerable out of their money.
The scam goes something like this: a relative — aka Eleni — calls late at night desperately claiming that she’s in imminent peril and that her captors are demanding discretion and money or else. The con works nearly every time and it serves another purpose, making both Eleni and Douglas feel more alive than they have in some time. Their togetherness turns into a parasitic relationship, and Douglas’ debauched transgressions also draw in other nurses as they participate in bacchanal-like nights of partying with IVs.
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Douglas mostly escapes detection from those in charge, including Dr. Mann (Mimi Rogers), by acting like he suffers from short-term memory loss. Bernstein’s fearlessness in exploring unsettling themes is admirable and centers on the kind of people and voices we don’t often see expressed in films, indie or mainstream. Equally commendable is how she takes a cue from David Cronenberg and David Lynch in making “Night Nurse” feel as if we’ve just entered a dream or an hallucination.
Never once does she break that spell, even in the film’s disturbing final act — a talker that flings open the door for so many more questions surrounding the relationship between the caregivers and the care cravers.
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Contact Randy Myers at [email protected].
‘NIGHT NURSE’
3 stars out of 4
Rated: R (language, erotic and adult situations, substance abuse)
Starring: Cemre Paksoy, Bruce McKenzie, Eleonore Hendricks, Mimi Rogers
Writer/director: Georgia Bernstein
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
When & where: Opens July 10 in theaters
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