NICOLE Kidman would probably rather forget this year's Venice Film Festival where her controversial new feature, the metaphysical love story Birth, received its world premiere.

Firstly, a number of critics voiced their disapproval during a packed press screening with loud jeers and boos.

Then Kidman's co-star, Lauren Bacall, sent waves throughout the Italian city by reacting angrily to one journalist's description of the Australian actress as a screen legend.

Considering all of the negative hoop-la surrounding Birth, it's a pleasant surprise to discover that maverick filmmaker Jonathan Glazer's follow-up to Sexy Beast is such a haunting and utterly absorbing portrait of love and mortality.

Ten years after the death of her husband Sean, Anna (Kidman) is preparing to start anew.

She has agreed to marry Joseph (Danny Huston), to the delight of her formidable mother Eleanor (Bacall) and pregnant sister Laura (Alison Elliott).

Shortly after Anna and Joseph's engagement party, a ten-year-old boy called Sean (Cameron Bright) makes a devastating announcement.

He claims to be Anna's dead husband reincarnate and begs her to cancel the wedding.

At first the family laughs off such a ludicrous suggestion but when Anna and her loved ones interview the young Sean, he demonstrates an uncanny knowledge of secrets and private facts.

Slowly, Anna begins to believe the boy's story and she finds herself falling in love with her dead husband all over again.

As the Venice Film Festival proved, Birth is a film that will sharply divide audiences.

The subject matter demands a huge leap of faith on the part of the audience, which only makes sense in the closing 15 minutes when the many tight coils of the screenplay finally unfurl.

Kidman is sensational - her character's grief and longing weigh her down in every frame.

Bright, last seen in the hokum thriller Godsend, is equally compelling and the rapport between the two actors is electric.

There are excellent supporting turns from Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall and Anne Heche, bathed in a delicious mood of ambiguity and uncertainty by director of photography Harris Savides.

The ending is a little messy and unsatisfying but still packs an emotional punch.

Glazer's mastery of his fragile material is assured and he creates some truly memorable sequences, set to Alexandre Desplat's emotive orchestral score.

At every turn, he trails in the wake of Kidman, reacting to her every anguished cry, and she doesn't let him down once.