Night Nurse

Eleni Sadik is not a great care-giver, but Doulas Callum is a terrible patient, so maybe they’re even. Neither of them should be in Dr. Mann’s gated assisted living community, especially when Sadik helps Callum con his neighbors. Nevertheless, they are such a good team of scammers, she develops a weird codependency in director-screenwriter Georgia Bernstein’s Night Nurse, which is now playing in New York.

Callum’s cognitive scores are so bad, Dr. Mann suspects he might be faking it—and she’s right. However, assigning Sadik as his after-hours nurse is a big mistake. We never really know why she was fired from her last job, but Callum picks up on her underlying neuroses and quickly exploits them.

Soon, she is an eager participant in his regular scam. She calls a poor victim with some degree of fading faculties, pretending to be their granddaughter, calling from the police station. Then Callum calls back, posing as the granddaughter’s lawyer, requesting the marks leave a cash retainer in their mailbox. It is an ugly, exploitative con that Sadik gets addicted to running. It seems like these scammer calls functions as a substitute for the kind of relations Callum just doesn’t have in him anymore.

Night Nurse is a weird film in the wrong way. Bernstein strives for a dreamy ethereal vibe, somewhat in the tradition of Sophia Coppola, but it does not suit the lurid subject matter. Regardless, the absolute best thing going for the film is Steven Jackson & Sam Clapp’s eerie piano, flute, and strings score, which would not sound out of place if it were grafted onto a film like Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Unfortunately, it is hard to figure just what Bernstein intended Night Nurse to be, but whatever it is, it is unpleasant. Simply put, the fable-like vibe just doesn’t work. Part of the problem is Bruce McKenzie, because he is so viscerally creepy as the sociopathic Callum, he clashes with the dark fairy-tale business. Admittedly, Cemre Paksoy’s portrayal of Sadik is bizarre, but in a quiet, inscrutable way. Even more frustratingly, Mimi Rogers is completely wasted as Dr. Mann.

The net result of all the conflicting inputs is a pretentious tonal traffic jam. It sounds great, but the musical artists deserved a better collaboration from everyone working with words and images. Definitely not recommended, Night Nurse is now playing in New York.