(Georgia Bernstein, USA, 2026, 95 minutes)
And if I'm feelin' edgy
There's a chick who's paid to be my slave
But she'll hit me with a needle
If she thinks I'm trying to misbehave
–James Taylor, "Knocking 'Round the Zoo" (1968)
In my time, I've seen plenty of films featuring medical staff and their charges, including films set at retirement communities, like Sarah Friedland's masterful Familiar Touch, but I've never seen a film involving elderly residents that takes a more overtly sexual approach than this one.
Debut director Georgia Bernstein, a producer on Alex Phillips' films, opens on a closeup of a coiled telephone cord, quickly establishing that Night Nurse may or may not be set in the past. She'll continue to scramble the orientation ever so slightly to the extent that I don't recall any cell phones, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. This is just a very hermetic world.
DP Lydia Nikonova's camera then travels up to reveal a pale neck, then stiff white fabric, before moving down again as the speaker explains that she's "in trouble, really bad trouble," though she sounds surprisingly calm. This is our protagonist, Eleni (Turkish actress Cemre Paksoy, with whom the director went to Northwestern), a wide-eyed nurse at an upscale retirement community in Illinois with an assisted living wing. "Grandpa," the man on the other end of the line, doesn't offer to help this damsel in distress, but instead encourages her to go on. Whatever this is, he's enjoying it.
When Bernstein reveals Eleni in full, days earlier, she's watching the pool from behind a glass partition as Mona (actress and casting director Eléonore Hendricks), a sandy-haired woman, guides Douglas (Bruce McKenzie, a more grizzled Will Patton type), aka "Grandpa," through the shallow water.
There's something unexpectedly sexual about her movements. As in Charlie Polinger's thriller The Plague, the pool seems vaguely mystical, especially when Sam Clapp and Steven Jackson's dreamy flute and piano score wafts across the screen. (I was also, unavoidably, reminded of Cocoon.)
Eleni, who has little nursing experience, has arrived for an interview. The assignment involves Douglas, whose wife concluded he has early on-set dementia when he started hitting on their housekeepers, confusing them with her, except he may have only been pretending or joking--if so, she didn’t find it especially funny. In any case, facility director Dr. Mann (the always-welcome Mimi Rogers) says she has a good feeling about Eleni and hires her on the spot.
It may be coincidental, but all of the nurses are quite comely. Chances are good the male patients, regardless as to their cognitive abilities, are appreciative. When Eleni meets with Douglas for the first time, she attempts to assess his mental fitness, but he just smokes and smiles enigmatically, though not necessarily because he's incapable of answering her questions.
While Mona, her roommate, watches over Douglas during the day, Eleni serves as his night nurse. Both women claim they want to be helpful, though Douglas tells Eleni he would like to take care of her. He doesn’t explain what he means by that, though, since 1) he does seem to need help, 2) he's a habitual liar, and 3) he may be confusing the nurses with his wife.
In movies about inexperienced young women entering into situations that aren't quite what they seem, they often turn out to be smarter, more sexual, or more mentally unstable than they at first appear, and Eleni is definitely hiding something. She tells Mona she was fired from her previous job over a misunderstanding, but it sounds like she disappeared afterward, i.e. "I wasn't myself for awhile," she says, suggesting time under psychiatric care.
Initially she seems more cautious than crazy, though she brings a nervous, yet seductive energy that recalls Sondra Locke, prior to her time with Clint Eastwood, particularly in A Reflection of Fear. When Eleni watches over Douglas, who has his own spacious suite, he stares at her the whole time, and Paksoy's expressive face indicates that she can feel his eyes on her.
It isn't as obvious whether she likes it or not. Then, one night, he pretends to be an attorney or bail bondsman while on the phone with a parent. Eleni tries to get him to hang up, but he overpowers her in a distinctly sexual way. It isn't assault, but he treats her as if she's the girl in question. Either he's asking a real person to send him $10,000 or the whole thing is a charade.
Right: Sondra Locke in 1973's A Reflection of Fear
At first, she lets him do his thing, but after he hangs up, she tells him she finds him disgusting before she starts to get into it--only for him to reject her. It's all very weird and confusing, and this back-and-forth will continue until the final sequence. Whatever he's up to, he's got her wrapped around his little finger. Disturbing tales abound of doctors and nurses abusing patients, but this is something else altogether.
After the encounter, she tells Mona she's changed, but instead of questioning how she's become "a different person," her roommate rolls with it, explaining that she's helping Douglas, and Mona has probably "helped" him, too, both sexually and by joining in on his phone scams. Soon, he's swanning about like Hugh Hefner with low-buttoned top, gold chain, and ever-present cigarette. He's like a vampire after a fresh infusion of blood.
They're one of the world's weirder sex triangles, though Douglas seduces even more nurses, crushing Eleni who only wants to share him with Mona.
Facility leadership, meanwhile, finds out about the telephone scam, but they believe a predatory community member is targeting their vulnerable residents, and not that a predatory resident is targeting vulnerable community members, but Douglas isn't off the hook, since his wife, who has already cut off his access to their accounts, decides to stop paying for his care. It seems unlikely he can continue to pay for his place in this posh facility with his phone scam.
So, Dr. Mann makes some changes, though it isn't clear if she's on the up and up either. She could just as easily want to destroy Douglas, Nurse Ratched-style, as to save him, and maybe she even feels left out, since he's the kind of guy who doesn't seem to notice women her age, accustomed as he is to his sexy young harem--even his wife appears to be much younger.
Considering the seductive thrillers she's made throughout her career, like Full Body Massage, it's a delight to see Mimi Rogers in freaky-deaky mode, at least momentarily, after years in television, most recently as upright--though not uptight--lawyer Honey Chandler on Bosch (Mimi's daughter, Lucy Rogers, a childhood friend of the director, co-produced the film).
Eleni isn't exactly pleased about Dr. Mann's changes, so she takes matters into her own hands, but no matter where you think things are going, you're probably wrong. I love when that happens.
I didn't love everything about this picture, which can get pretty repetitive, but Georgia Bernstein brings things home in fine style, her custom-fit cast rises to the increasingly-strange occasion--even risking some unintentional silliness--and it totally won me over by the end, even as it isn't always easy to spend time with Eleni or Douglas.
Granted, Bernstein doesn't punish Eleni for her kinks--the film is like The Duke of Burgundy or Pillion in that respect--but she offers a unique take on the blurry lines between consent and control and madness and manipulation that plays like a post-millennial variation on dreamy 1970s chillers 3 Women, The Stepford Wives (without the robots), and Death Dream with Sondra Locke, Colleen Camp, and Seymour Cassel (without the flying food).
Weird as fuck, though not in the ways I expected, it's a startling debut.
I recommend this interview for more on Georgia Bernstein's inspirations.
Night Nurse plays Northwest Film Forum for one night only, July 27, thanks to Grand Illusion Cinema. Images from Independent Film Company via Filmmaker Magazine (Cemre Paksoy), Oklahoma Free Press (Paksoy and Bruce McKenzie with cord), Mark Reviews Movies (Paksoy and McKenzie), Film at Lincoln Center (Sondra Locke), Movies Thru the Spectrum (Eléonore Hendricks, Paksoy, and McKenzie), and IFC (twisted poster image).
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