'Birth' more disturbing than profound

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A reincarnation pretext manipulated into a dubious argument for cross-generational erotic dalliance, "Birth" is a Halloween-weekend freak show that only an art-house audience might care to scrutinize.

The highly inappropriate partners here are Nicole Kidman as a pixie-visaged and coifed widow named Anna and juvenile actor Cameron Bright as a poker-faced, persistent 10-year-old suitor, Sean. A total stranger, the boy claims to be the second coming of her husband, also a Sean, who perished, apparently of a coronary, 10 years earlier.

Given this starting point, could "Birth" fail to be a dilly?

Director Jonathan Glazer makes a fetish of ominous overtones, imprudently overorchestrated by composer Alexandre Desplat. The prologue prolongs and prolongs a wintry traveling shot behind a jogger in Central Park. Shortly after a blessed cut to another angle, the runner keels over in the darkness of an archway. An instant later, a baby is born in what appears to be a semisubmerged setting. Evidently, a transfer of spirits occurred. The plot per se dates from 10 years later, when the erstwhile baby insists that he is the late jogger, a mystic shuffle that comes as a surprise to both families, which dwell in different social spheres.

It's never clear if something in particular put a mystical bee in the bonnet of Sean the younger. It would be more interesting if he were an instrument of malice, but the writers seem to glide right by that exploitable notion.

The boy asserts his Sean-the-goner identity after infiltrating a birthday party at the poshly sepulchral upper Fifth Avenue residence shared by Anna, her mother, Eleanor (Lauren Bacall); her pregnant sister, Laura (Alison Elliott); her brother-in-law, Bob (Arliss Howard); and her own fiance, Joseph (Danny Huston), whose longstanding marriage proposal has finally been accepted. Repeated attempts to evict or reason with the little interloper prove unsuccessful. Sean keeps pestering Anna with avowals of undying love.

There's a welcome episode that encourages Mr. Huston to go on a rampage and try to spank the boy into surrender, but the movie as a whole fails to take a redemptive turn for the uproarious. On the contrary, it goes cuckoo in a self-enraptured way. Anna decides that the boy is the genuine article in lost loves. Because Cameron Bright would justify a revival of Damien, the devil spawn of the "Omen" series, this infatuation appears utterly daft. Especially so when woman and boy hold intimate conversations in the bathtub and she speculates that the whole thing might work out if they can play rope-a-dope for a decade or so.

At this point "Birth" gets exceptionally suspect. The transgressive alarm bell is ringing again. Are we being readied for another slither down the slippery slope? In this case, the explorers seem to be fixated on the pedophilia theme as a neglected provocation, overdue for a bold and sympathetic reappraisal. Bernardo Bertolucci tried to mix it with incest in "Luna" 25 years ago and laid an egg. Even if "Birth" is also hooted into obscurity, we probably haven't seen the last of semicoy proselytizing for woman-boy or man-boy or consider-the-variations romantic match-ups on the fearless, heedless, shameless screen.

A thematic monstrosity that also overrates its own stylistic refinement, "Birth" weds the prurient to the portentous to the insufferable. With "Dogville," "The Stepford Wives" and now "Birth" this year, it can no longer be denied that Miss Kidman's Oscar hangover has reached historic proportions.

**

TITLE: "Birth"

RATING: R (Sustained morbid content; fleeting nudity and sexual candor, including an interlude of simulated intercourse; intimations of pedophilia)

CREDITS: Directed by Jonathan Glazer. Screenplay by Jean-Claude Carriere, Milo Addica and Mr. Glazer. Cinematography by Harris Savides. Production design by Kevin Thompson. Costume design by John Dunn. Music by Alexandre Desplat.

RUNNING TIME:100 minutes

MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS