Twenty-five years ago, Nicole Kidman starred in a sex drama where she played a married woman requesting a more fulfilling sexual experience from her husband. The movie had the distinction of taking place during Christmas time. Eyes Wide Shut was famously a commercial and critical flop in 1999, but it’s become an enduring classic. The last film from legend Stanley Kubrick, we could now make an argument that it’s in the running for one of his most popular films. Now, in 2024, there’s a new Christmas movie starring Kidman, Babygirl. She’s no longer a doctor’s trophy/housewife like the previous film, but a corporate CEO for a major American tech company. She’s the #girlboss of her day, but her desires pose a threat to everything she’s accomplished.
This is director Halina Reijn’s follow up to 2022’s Bodies Bodies Bodies, a funny but ultimately toothless horror-satire that starred a slate of up-and-coming young actresses. On Babygirl, Reijn wrote the script as well, and in doing press for this movie, she’s spoken to the importance of making dangerous movies about female sexuality. Both Babygirl and Bodies essentially fulfill their mission statement, but only in an “on paper” kind of way. Reijn wants to court danger, but that danger is often free of narrative consequence. Messy, complicated situations are too easily simplified by contrivance. Imagine if someone watched Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, and decided that it needed a happy ending and you’ll get something close to the effect of Babygirl.
The casting of Kidman is the film’s most important choice. She plays Romy Mathis, a CEO at a robotics corportation married to a New York theater director, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), with whom she has two teenaged daughters (Esther McGregor, Vaughan Riley). They live comfortably upper class: high-end but not tacky, with an apartment in the city and a larger property in the burbs. Her company is launching a new automation campaign that takes up more and more of her personal time. When she meets a new batch of interns, one in particular – Samuel (Harris Dickinson) – is shockingly forward in his conversations with her, making inappropriate innuendo that frightens Romy into stunned silence. In a company mentor program, Samuel chooses Romy, and his suggestions go from gauchely unsubtle to direct, almost demanding.
Samuel’s tact challenges her authority and her very sense of self. He attacks her position, her ego, but Romy begins to realize that it excites her as well. Her sex life with Jacob is healthy and regular, but unfulfilling. In the film’s opening scene, she secretly chases sex with Jacob with hardcore porn which gives her a more intense orgasm. Samuel’s emotional manipulation has an edge to it, which triggers sexual fantasies that Romy has been too ashamed to admit she wants. When she finally succumbs to Samuel’s demands, a major rule is established: he tells her what to do and she does it. This may include getting on all fours and licking milk out of a saucer like a cat. In exchange for the degradation, Samuel gives her the intense sexual experience that she’s desperate for.
There’s a long tradition of movie’s exploring a female character’s attraction to sexual subordination, and the seeming contradictions that presents. Not sure how many of those films were released to wide audiences on Christmas day (Eyes Wide Shut‘s was released in mid-July). Distributor A24 is taking a gamble that audiences are more hungry for erotic films than they claim to be. I think that decision is an intelligent, if ultimately imprudent, one. The movie’s promotion is banking on Kidman’s reputation as an actor who’s historically chosen daring, transgressive films. Kidman is famously beautiful, and she obviously commits a lot of resources to the way she looks, but that has never defined her choices as a movie star, and her impeccable taste has gained her a wide fanbase despite never being a consistent box office draw, in the traditional sense.
As Romy, Kidman’s performance is incredible. In a career defined by bold choices, Babygirl both solidifies that distinction but also offers self-reflexive commentary. There’s a level of vulnerability here that she’s seldom tapped into before. Her scenes with Dickinson allow her to trace the self-delusion of her life, the emotional and sexual prison she’s allowed herself to fall into in order to project the “normalcy” of an American family. Dickinson, the young English actor from Triangle of Sadness, gives his best performance to date as a particularly toxic young man who knows how to use the language of feminism to manipulate Romy to his whims. And Banderas, an off-beat but clever choice for the cucked husband, gets his moments as well – his role in his wife’s dissatisfaction isn’t malicious, but it is substantial.
The performances from the film’s three leads offer much more complexity than Reijn’s script, which falls well short of anything truly revelatory. Given an opportunity to really examine what the fallout of the situation would cause, Babygirl instead chooses to end itself in a surprisingly quaint way. A pivotal sequence near the end involving all three actors is a perfect example of the film’s paradox: the sequence is exquisitely performed but absent of meaning or payoff. The characters simply choose to accept the circumstances with which they previously rejected, a development that neuters drama and disappoints anyone intrigued by the complications of their behavior. This is ultimately a good movie, and Reijn does direct with a visual competence that can almost make you forget how underbaked her script is. Almost.
Written and Directed by Halina Reijn