‘Night Nurse’ is direly lacking life support

      The supposed erotic thriller, “Night Nurse,” is not so much a movie as it is an OnlyFans fantasy involving a twenty-something nurse attempting to boff her septuagenarian patient while the pair conduct a phone scam designed to bilk seniors out of their life savings. Such a turn-on!

     It’s even more off-putting than it sounds, not because of the huge age difference, although that is an issue. No, it’s more that Georgia Bernstein’s writing-directing debut proves slower and duller than watching Lucite dry. She’s less concerned with eliciting evocative performances from her two leads, Cemre Paksoy and Bruce McKenzie, than she is with posing them as if she were Vermeer herself. It’s all quite pretentious and hollow.

    Nothing about it rings true from the get-go, as Paksoy’s Eleni shows up at the high-end nursing home operated more like a brothel by Mimi Rogers’ Dr. Mann. Not only do the highly attractive attendants wipe the bums of their clients, but they also participate in drug orgies and homoerotic displays in which swinging both ways is all but a work requirement.

    How is it possible, you wonder, for pompous jerks like McKenzie’s Douglas Callum to find the time to scam his fellow patients when he spends his days hanging with his harem of nurses, driving them around town in his vintage Lincoln Continental convertible and/or sparring with his fed-up trophy wife, Nancy (Karin Anglin)?

    It’s the latter who’s been bankrolling her hubby’s Caligula-like lifestyle, committing him after he hit on their housekeeper. Or so Dr. Mann suggests while interviewing Eleni for the job of assisting Mona (Eleonore Hendricks) in tending to Douglas 24-7, a gig that includes providing sensual sponge baths, arm-in-arm strolls around the facility’s therapeutic swimming pool and spoon-feeding the spry, perfectly capable old man his din-din.

     Of course, during off-hours, Mona and Eleni share a bed in their onsite quarters. All the better to prompt a little girl-on-girl action after those long, arduous days caring for a surly ingrate like Douglas. It’s one of the film’s few surprises that Douglas isn’t included in all of Mona and Eleni’s extracurricular activities. But they are both very much a part of his cruel phone scams.

   First, he cases a mark, making sure they are wealthy and no longer fully in control of their faculties. Once confirmed, he has either Mona or Eleni call the dupe pretending to be the person’s granddaughter. They say they’re in trouble with the law and need cash to make bail.

    During these episodes, Douglas gropes the women while seductively telling them exactly what to say before ordering them to hang up. Then he calls right back, claiming to be the granddaughter’s lawyer, providing instructions on where and how to send the dough.  Eleni, especially, gets off on the experience to the point she becomes addicted. A feeling not shared by the local police, the only people in town seemingly unaware of who’s responsible for this burgeoning crime wave.  

   I assume it’s Bernstein’s intent for us to be aroused. But I was merely bored, mostly because I couldn’t fathom a young, smart, beautiful woman like Eleni going gaga for a nasty, selfish, egotistical asshole like Douglas. She thinks his felonious behavior and verbal abuse toward her is hot. To her, he’s supplying the most excitement she’s experienced in her entire sheltered life.

    Most, I suspect, will view Dougie the same as I, as an obnoxious low-life getting his kicks playing mind games and hurting a great many people. Don’t we already see enough of that daily in the news, observing spineless sycophants bowing to every whim of a demented leader?

    I admired Steven Jackson’s score and Breanne Ward’s production design, but not much more. The characters are soulless snoozes and their machinations ridiculously absurd. It’s nothing like any rest home I’ve ever visited. In fact, why is Douglas even here? He’s ornery, quick-witted and controlling. Also, apparently great at pleasing his two nurses, even though he can no longer get his “pogo stick” up.

   If this were an accurate portrait of retirement living, seniors would be crashing the gates. After all, where else is a 70- or 80-year-old man going to find this many gorgeous women, all 40 or 50 years their junior, to satisfy their itch for a little sexy nurse cosplay? And, as is the case with Eleni, begging them for it? C’mon man! Get real.

    Little wonder Bernstein’s intended message about caregiving having less to do with benevolence than fulfilling pathological needs rings so empty. There are shards of that idea here, but they’re lost in all the artifice. I was more taken by the destructive role jealousy begins to play, as Douglas’s fancy for Mona swifts toward Eleni and then toward Michelle (Colleen Rose Trundy), Mona’s replacement. This could get deadly.

    Which it does, though nothing prepares you for the brutal, masochistic ending. I found it distasteful and exploitative, something I never would have expected from a female director. Bernstein may think it profound, but I’m sure most will view it as more an act of desperation by a novice filmmaker blindly trying to find her way.

     Paksoy and McKenzie do deserve credit for their willingness to go this dark. Both are charismatic and somewhat compelling.  But they largely fail to convince us that Eleni’s attraction to Douglas is rooted in anything more than misguided plotting. It’s all about contrivance and manipulation rendered so blatantly obvious that it does nothing but facilitate a cinematically induced coma.

Movie review

Night Nurse

Rated: Not rated

Cast: Cemre Paksoy, Bruce McKenzie, Eleonore Hendricks and Mimi Rogers

Director: Georgia Bernstein

Writer: Georgia Bernstein

Runtime: 91 minutes

Where: In theaters July 10 (limited)

Grade: C-