The Ick Factor

The new Nicole Kidman film, Birth, has audiences astir with ickiness. The film’s plot revolves around a 10 year-old boy who claims to be Kidman’s reincarnated dead husband. Naturally, Kidman’s character falls in love with the TEN YEAR-OLD BOY, and kisses him, has a bath with him, etc. Somehow this is supposed to be “high art,” yet as critic Robert Wilonsky writes:

But there’s no getting around it: Birth offers the nuttiest apologia ever for pedophilia. If the sexes were reversed, it’s doubtful the movie would even get a wide US release. Imagine the outcry if a filmmaker were to show a ten-year-old girl stripping off her clothes and climbing into a bath with a nude man in his late thirties.

Granted, I haven’t seen the film—but the mere premise of it seems so far out of even the secular mainstream that most people will have a hard time not viewing Kidman’s character as a sicko. The problem is that movies like this tend to help twisted concepts like ADULTS FALLING IN LOVE WITH CHILDREN become more mainstream.