‘Babygirl’ Wants To Know Your Fantasy
Babygirl, a movie written and directed by Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn and starring Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson, is about facades. It’s also about sex, but less about sex itself and more about what sex says about a person, and the ways we suppress our sexual appetites in order for it to say nothing about us at all. Babygirl, Reijn’s second English-language film after 2022’s Bodies Bodies Bodies, taps into a conservative cultural moment that is firmly anti-sex while still being in sex’s thrall. It is the subject everyone wants to talk about but no one wants to see, or seemingly even have.
The movie follows tech CEO Romy Mathis (Kidman), an unabashed, all-caps GIRLBOSS who nominally “has it all”: a powerful job, a big office, an eager assistant who looks up to her, a seemingly well-adjusted family that includes two daughters and a hot theater director for a husband (Antonio Banderas). But there is a restless beast inside of Romy, and vanilla sex with her husband can’t appease it—so much so that Romy often finds herself having to watch dom-play porn in the bathroom afterward in order to actually reach an orgasm. When Samuel (Dickinson), a much younger intern for the company arrives, she slowly finds herself ensnared in his web, and discovers that he is up for taming that beast. Both in spite and because of the power dynamics and the threat their affair poses to her life and career, they begin an ill-advised relationship that is hot and steamy, but most importantly effective and passionate. Romy finds her sexual needs met for the first time, which in this movie is as important as the tension or thriller aspects at play.
It is not exactly stereotype-shattering to depict a successful, controlling woman who desires a relationship that forces her to relinquish that control, but Reijn is mostly interested in the ways society psychoanalyzes sexuality. Here and in Instinct, her debut feature, she investigates the ways a therapy-pilled, supposedly enlightened culture regards kink and the “wrong” kinds of sex. The movie plays with the expected presupposition that there must be something wrong with Romy, a scar from her past that hasn’t healed, that explains why she’s drawn to BDSM and would jeopardize her life and career for it. As a student of erotic thrillers like 9 1/2 Weeks and Basic Instinct, Reijn brings both a feminist and an arch cultural-analyst lens to the genre that is smart and funny, playing with sex and desire in ways that feel fresh.
Which isn’t to underplay the more traditional elements of the erotic thriller on display here. Babygirl plays to the tune of the genre’s beat and is charged with risqué sexual energy. Romy and Samuel’s first scene in a hotel together vibrates with a tension and eroticism that is patient and effective, demanding you to sit in your own discomfort (or comfort, depending on your perspective). The movie is full of feral, intoxicating passion that indulges the genre’s campiness without ever toppling into hokeyness, and delights in the sexual thrills without being exploitative. Babygirl only has a few out-and-out sex scenes, but in effect this turns every moment between Romy and Samuel into sex. Romy’s office, corporate meeting rooms, Romy’s dresses, local bars, an industrial rave, and even a glass of milk all become sexy in Reijn’s hands. Milk hasn’t been this sexual since that one scene in Pootie Tang. Reijn has called Babygirl a “fairy tale,” and it makes sense in the way it creates a fantasy life of ultimate capitalist bliss around Romy, a sheen of immaculate-wealth porn to offset the depravity of her own desires. She’s not just a businesswoman, she’s an ideal representation of what women are meant to aspire to. As such, her desire for degradation is even more shameful and thus more exciting.
It helps to have Nicole Kidman as your muse. Kidman is a rare and strange actress, so beautiful as to be unreal and yet awkward, stilted, alien in her behavior. Kidman is best in roles that play off her robotic angel affect, like Birth, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, or AMC’s “We Make Movies Better” ad. She sells Romy’s importance and power, portraying her stuffy, outer facade like a human suit she puts to help her simultaneously blend in and stand out. Dickinson plays off her well. He has a rascally charm and a jock build, with the charismatic pull of a puppy dog at times. He’s most effective when he lets slip that he barely knows what he’s doing, but he’s giving into his libido, so why can’t you?
The question of what makes sex “right” or “wrong” is always an interesting one, even divorced from the context of a married woman chasing after her younger employee. But that context muddies the question the movie is most interested in, and the film’s biggest flaw is how it ultimately avoids really dealing with it. Similar to Luca Guadagnino’s film Challengers from earlier in the year, Babygirl is a film that plumbs the ways desire and power affect sex, sometimes to disastrous ends, which may not always be received well in our prudish times. And just like with Challengers, Babygirl is better at asking questions than offering answers.
