Nicole Kidman angers aborigines by playing the didgeridoo

Actress Nicole Kidman is in trouble at opposite ends of the world today over her new film Australia: in Britain, she's got an absolute stinker of a review from fellow Aussie Germaine Greer, while back home she's in the doghouse for playing the aborigines' traditional instrument, the didgeridoo, while promoting the film on German television. It seemed like a harmless enough PR stunt, but aboriginal custom firmly dictates women are forbidden to play the instrument because, they say, it results in infertility.

Kidman, 40, made her faux pas while appearing on the chat show, Wetten Das...?. A didgeridoo was presented to her amid much laughter, and she proceeded to blow into it while her Australia co-star, Hugh Jackman, pranced around on one leg mimicking one of the aboriginal actors who appear in director Baz Luhrmann's epic take on Australia's history.

All very funny, it seemed, but that is not the view of Allen Madden, the cultural and educational officer at Sydney's Aboriginal Land Council. "I presume she doesn't know, otherwise she wouldn't have been playing it," he told the Sydney Morning Herald. Richard Green, an award-winning aboriginal actor and screenwriter, went a little further. "I will guarantee she has no more children," he said. "It's not meant to be played by women as it will make them barren."

As for Germaine Greer, she writes in today's Guardian that Australia is an "unforgivable," "fatuous," "tasteless," government-supported and dishonest "fake epic" designed to promote Tourism Australia and the latest plans for aborigine reconciliation.

"The scale of the disaster that is Baz Luhrmann's Australia is gradually becoming apparent," writes Greer. In parts of the film Luhrmann demonstrates "disrespect bordering on contempt," probably because "the only history Luhrmann seems to care about is the history of movies." As for the acting, 12-year-old Brandon Walters is excellent but "the less said about Nicole Kidman's interpretation of [her] role the better."