Though it seems the nation’s youth have decided that sex scenes don’t belong in movies anymore, at least some elders from foreign lands are trying to keep things explicit for Americans. To wit, the new film Babygirl, a thriller-comedy about sex and power from Dutch director Halina Reijn and starring Nicole Kidman. The film, which premiered here at the Venice Film Festival on Friday, does its noble best to have a frank—and entertaining!—dialogue about complex desire, visuals and all.
Kidman, long the most daring A-lister in the business, plays Romy, the founder and CEO of a robotics company who lives a glossy life in a Manhattan high rise and a charming manse in the country. She’s rich, she’s married to a guy who looks like Antonio Banderas (because he’s played by Antonio Banderas), she’s got two bright kids, and her business is booming. Romy would seem to have all that she needs—except for one crucial thing.
That something is sex, of course, particularly the kind of sub/dom play that Romy enjoys watching in p*rn. Reijn’s dichotomy is obvious but effective: here is a woman who runs the show at work and at home, but would like to be bossed around in bed. That seeming contradiction frustrates and alienates Romy; outwardly doting as she may be with the people around her, she’s disconnected, distracted, pent up.
And then, suddenly, there is a handsome, magnetic intern named Samuel, played with peculiar strut by Harris Dickinson. The attraction is immediate and soon brazenly acted upon by Samuel, who instantly sniffs out just what it is that Romy is looking for. Dickinson, in a beguiling performance, shrewdly offsets Samuel’s boggling allure with faint suggestions that he may also be a sociopath—which, actually, might be part of the appeal.
Reijn and Kidman have fun as Romy first gives in to these urges, to this potentially dangerous young man who could blow up her life in a second. She’s flustered and worked up, titillated by the risk of it all. The film is at once sly and loopy as it chronicles the pair’s tumble into libidinous exploration, at one point turning the traditional romcom montage into something much more carnal.
One might think that, like 50 Shades of Grey, Romy and Samuel are headed toward genuine romance. But then Samuel says or does something ominous, or Reijn chills the mood. We are not meant to be swept up in the way of Anastasia and Christian; it’s not entirely clear how turned on we’re supposed to be, either. Kidman and Dickinson are both very good-looking people, and an illicit flirtation is always exciting. More often than not, though, the sex scenes in Babygirl are clinical rather than combustible. There’s a remove to them; inadvertently or not, Reijn creates the sense that we are watching test subjects through a two-way mirror.
This doesn’t necessarily make the proceedings any less interesting. But one does maybe crave a bit more heat from a movie that is so willing to tackle intimate matters. Certainly there could be more flouting of taboo, arousing or not. While we do see Romy crawl around on the floor and lap milk out of a saucer, Babygirl is surprisingly tame. It’s not a gentle film by any means, but there’s a restraint that prevents Romy’s adventures from spinning into the truly transgressive.
Much like Romy at the beginning of the film, Babygirl also lacks a climax. Instead, Romy’s journey into sexual satisfaction—or, at least, toward that satisfaction—progresses on a mild incline. What she experiences is no doubt significant, yet it doesn’t feel earthshaking from the vantage point of the audience.
Perhaps this is the clever lesson of the film, a reminder that sex isn’t always such a big deal. Need mustn’t inherently be treated with such guarded, fussy propriety. Babygirl is probably not encouraging viewers to cheat on their spouses, exactly—but it could be coaxing folks, perhaps especially women, to take a chance on naming desire aloud to a partner, to assert the worth of one’s own gratification.
The feminist politics of the film are complicated. Reijn skewers girl-boss cliché while also reveling in it; there is a half-made argument that while Romy is behaving terribly as a CEO, she’s just doing what so many men in similar positions have done. Challenging Romy’s improper behavior is her assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde), who represents the voice of Gen Z reason—or scolding, depending on how you look at it. But Esme’s got her own needs too, and is willing to leverage whatever she can to meet them.
So the morals are murky, intentionally so. Those looking for some kind of fable or principled treatise will need to search elsewhere. What is decidedly clear, consistent, and declarative in the film is the force of seeing Kidman venture down yet another new avenue, tossing self-consciousness out the window (or, maybe, just laying it aside for a while) to help realize Reijn’s curious vision. One struggles to think of another actor of her status who would do such a thing these days. In the end, it might be Nicole Kidman who, among other many other accomplishments, saves sex in cinema.
