You expect anyone with a name like “Romy” to be a person of some privilege, and it’s true in the case of Nicole Kidman’s character in Babygirl. Romy, who claims to have been named by some guru in a commune, is a high-powered exec at a company specializing in robots and AI or something vaguely of-the-moment. She has a loving husband, played by a deeply gray Antonio Banderas, and two beautiful, spirited daughters. In short, Romy has everything. Well, not everything. Her husband can’t get her orgasm. The film begins with her faking one loudly for him, and he never suspects a thing. Almost immediately after it’s over he’s flushed with pleasurable exhaustion, and she is up and in another room to masturbate to submissive porn videos.
Babygirl is directed by Halina Reijn, the Dutch actress-turned-filmmaker who scored a fun hit with A24‘s Bodies Bodies Bodies, a party movie masquerading as a horror. She veers into erotic thriller territory this time, exploring power dynamics in the workplace, consent, sexual desire, and more. It’s a provocative movie that offers Kidman a daring performance in which she is frequently nude, in the throes of sexual conquest, and often humiliated with punishments fit for a naughty pet. While the film is always intriguing, it can’t help but also be too glossy and proud of itself for its perceived insights. And yet it falls short of last year’s far superior Fair Play, which has some grit and dirt beneath its fingernails while exploring similarly carnal territory.
Kidman is joined in this erotic venture by Harris Dickinson who plays ambitious intern Samuel. He pretty much has Romy sized-up from the beginning. Of all the interns he is the only one who dares her with a challenging, mildly offensive question about the company. She’s turned on by his youth, confidence, and yes, his boyish good looks. He’s so different from Romy’s aging, fragile husband, a playwright as if they needed to make him seem any weaker. Romy meets Samuel incidentally when he’s calmed an angry dog on the street. It’s clear from the look in her eyes that she wants him to put her on a leash, too. Samuel signs up for Romy to be his mentor, but it isn’t long before he is mentoring her in the closet room, at shady hotels, in the bathroom. He has her drinking milk out of a saucer to the sound of George Michael’s “Father Figure” for Chrissakes. If this all sounds a bit cringe, well, it is much of the time and yet also exciting to see Kidman in this kind of role. She’s game for all of it, although one wishes the screenplay did her a greater service.
It’s safe to say that the power dynamics keep shifting more into Samuel’s favor. Romy challenges this, at first; she’s older, wiser, richer, and has all of the power at work. But those are also her weaknesses. She’s the one with everything to lose, and one call from Samuel would destroy it all. At first, it’s this danger that attracts her so much to him. He fills the empty void she’s had for so long as a wife and mother. Of course, it eventually goes too far and people start getting hurt. Reijn does a good job of not assigning blame or preaching to the audience, but its middlebrow stance also makes for a frustratingly bland resolution. Kudos to Kidman for continuing to push herself, but Babygirl‘s lustful escapades feel straight out of a corporate boardroom.
Babygirl is open in theaters now.
