Night Nurse
Interviewing for a position at an upscale retirement community, Eleni (Cemre Paksoy) is told her potential client is 'difficult, eccentric on a good day.' Douglas (Bruce McKenzie) turns out to be a surprisingly good looking older man who is clearly messing with Eleni for sport when she gives him cognizance tests, but Douglas' idea of play, which turns out to be erotically charged, not to mention illegal, becomes a major turn-on for his "Night Nurse."
Laura's Review: B-
This is a very strange feature debut from writer/director Georgia Bernstein, inspired by an attempt to defraud her grandmother. Jumping from that premise, she's gotten twisty, telling a tale of a sexy senior who seduces the young female nurses assigned to him to bilk his own neighbors with the grandparent scam. There is something about the film's erotic nature and Bernstein's tableaux of Douglas smoking a cigarette while standing over lazing nurses on his verdant patio that put me in mind of Australian director Paul Cox's "Man of Flowers," although this film's protagonist is far darker in nature.
This is the type of film that keeps you hooked wondering just where it is going to go, only to leave you a bit baffled when it gets there. We learn next to nothing about Eleni except for an intriguing tossed tidbit that she was fired from her previous job, something she calls a 'misunderstanding.' She first sees Douglas being led about the pool by Mona (Eléonore Hendricks), the woman who had talked her into a more form fitting uniform in the locker room, perhaps a gambit to pull her into Douglas' bizarre little crime ring. Once in his apartment, the older man says 'let me take care of you,' before making a phone call, wrapping the young woman in its cord and pressing her into a corner, demanding that she repeat the lines he feeds her into the receiver. Eleni does what she's told, telling another elderly gentleman that she is his granddaughter, has been in an accident that might send her to jail, that she needs money and he should stay by the phone to take a call from her lawyer. Douglas takes on that role to make the financial arrangements.
We'll see that Douglas is something of a con man in general, his daughter Nancy (Karin Anglin) visiting to declare 'no more handouts,' her father laughing in response. Told that 'Mrs. Callum is no longer the guarantor of your account,' Douglas merely claims it is a mistake. When he's questioned about his low test scores by Doctor Mann (Mimi Rogers), he'll turn the situation around, suggesting he needs more help. Suddenly he has seven nurses in his apartment, most partaking of drugs delivered by IV. This type of situation is hard to justify, a bit too far off the rails to make any kind of sense, just like the staff listening to one of those scam calls and having no ability to trace or track it. Eleni watches as others, like Michelle (Colleen Rose Trundy), are brought into his circle and, jealous, begins to ask him to make calls when he doesn't want to. Coming on to him, Douglas tells her 'if you're looking for a pogo stick, I'm really not your guy.' Mona had assured the young woman she was 'giving him something to live for' to allay her guilt.
McKenzie, who resembles a more handsome John Lithgow, is quite compelling as Douglas, his allure to these young women believable, but while we can accept Hendricks as a co-conspirator, Paksoy is too much a blank slate. The film's climax seems to come out of left field, Douglas suddenly exhibiting far more monstrous behavior than we've been led to expect. "Night Nurse" is certainly original and cinematographer Lidia Nikonova gives it erotic atmosphere with suffocating close-ups and suggestive framing, but it never fully satisfies after early promise. Still, Bernstein has come up with something so unusual, interest is piqued for her next.
The Independent Film Company releases "Night Nurse" in theaters on 7/10/26.
