Night Nurse – Chuck: Skip it

While watching Georgia Bernstein’s overstuffed and underdone “Night Nurse,” I couldn’t help but think of the Manhattan skyscraper that began to collapse in on itself earlier this week. Much like that flawed structure, this film has more artifice than its flimsy foundation can support. Teeming with intriguing ideas and potentially fascinating characters, Bernstein emphasizes style over substance to the movie’s detriment.

Taking place in an extremely liberal and open retirement community, fresh off the tree nurse Eleni (Cemre Paksoy) comes looking for a job. Obviously, sees never seen a horror film as phrases that should send her running into the night – “We’ve had a lot of turn over,” and “I have a good feeling about you,” for instance – go right over her head. She’s hired on the spot and assigned to care for Douglas (Bruce McKenzie), suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s…or so he claims.

While Douglas has the staff of doctors buffaloed, it doesn’t take long for him to reveal his true nature to Eleni. He enlists her in a phone scam in which they call other residents known to have money and she pretends to be their granddaughter. Claiming to have been arrested and in need of immediate bail money, the well-meaning marks cough up thousands in cash in a heartbeat. Soon, Douglas, Eleni and fellow nurse Mona (Eleonore Hendricks) are rolling in the green.

While this is a straight-forward premise, Bernstein introduces psychological and sexual elements into the mix that go nowhere. Just why Eleni and the rest of the nurses fall under Douglas’ sway is never explained. Average looking, without money and only mildly charismatic, just why these young women are at his beck and call remains a mystery.

The lengths Eleni ultimately goes to in order to curry his favor defies logic. Knowing nothing of her past, just why she falls victim to the abusive power dynamic Douglas employs is a mystery. That the phone calls they make come to excite her sexually comes out of nowhere as well. Was she abused as a child? Just what was her relationship with her father? From where does her neediness stem? A bit of information regarding her background would have gone a long way towards grounding the movie.

I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed but I’m not such a dullard that I need everything spelled out for me. However, there has to be a basis for why characters do what they do and Bernstein opts for ambiguity (laziness?) rather than providing basic motivation for her characters’ actions. It’s a fatal error that drives the film into the realm of the ridiculous rather than creating mystery.

Bernstein’s snail-like pacing doesn’t help matters. Allowing scenes to run too long and having far too many moments that don’t move the story along only invites closer scrutiny of a script’s flaws. 45 minutes in, my list of lapses in logic and structural flaws was as long as my arm.

Once Bernstein mercifully gets us to the finale, the movie has completely jumped the tracks. Just why and how the two principals have arrived at their final destination and why they have another nurse in tow is beyond me. “Nurse” is yet another feature that calls to mind the tale of the emperor’s new clothes. Bernstein may have convinced some her film is high art, but the fact is, it’s a pretentious, empty piece of work.

1 1/2 Stars