In Babygirl, Nicole Kidman plays a woman who has it all, till she meets a younger man who offers her a chance to fulfill her dark desires.
Babygirl
Halina Reijn (director and writer), Jasper Wolf (cinematography), Matt Hannam (editor)
Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde (cast)
September 10, 2024 (TIFF)
Here’s a universal truth we know about Hollywood: it has a bad track record with presenting female desire in a direct way. Halina Reijn’s Babygirl attempts to upend this formula. In the film, Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman) is a wealthy CEO of her own robot/AI company who has a loving husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), and two caring, if sometimes obnoxious, daughters. Romy is well respected at her workplace, having earned her way to the top through tenacity. But, she’s got these lustful desires that, at home, she can only assuage by watching pornography in secret. And then one day, on her way to work, a young man, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), tames an unleashed dog, and her long-subdued fantasies crave to break into reality.
Babygirl doesn’t shy away from its central conceit of showing that women have sexual desires and like to indulge in them. The film starts off with Romy and her husband Jacob in bed, followed by Romy sneaking away to finish the job on her own. The film never backs away from prolonged sex scenes. But here’s the problem: for a film full of sex, it’s not in the least bit sexy. There is no chemistry between the two main leads, and the power dynamic between the characters is uncomfortable and limits the sexiness of the relationship. And worst of all, Samuel is an annoying character. The many sex scenes between Romy and Samuel can’t imbue sexiness into the film either because they’re not the hot-and-heavy, passionate kind. Instead, the scenes are more about them finding their way around their own kinks, but neither even knows what they want. A film about a couple exploring or discovering their sexuality could be sexy, but Babygirl doesn’t do that either. It’s far too busy indulging in how bold it is that it forgets to build a cohesive narrative.
The storytelling in Babygirl is disjointed–scenes are thrown in, but they have no connection to one another. Far too often, characters discuss information that one party couldn’t have known. We move from story beat to story beat through contrivances instead of a proper flow in the narrative. Romy and Samuel are together because the script needs them to be–there’s no natural progression for them to start their affair. Romy’s the head of the company, Samuel’s an intern at the company; there’s a power dynamic at play beyond their age gap which crops up from time to time, but only to ramp up the stakes temporarily. Romy isn’t just unfulfilled sexually, she has a kink that’s hyper-specific. How convenient that she finds someone to fulfill her needs in the wild, and he just happens to be working as an intern in her company? Even if I could believe that, whenever Samuel is in Romy’s vicinity, he is rude and presumptuous. There’s nothing attractive about Samuel’s grating personality. Writer-director Reijn appears to equate recalcitrance with rebelliousness, but they’re not the same. There’s no way an intern would survive a day in an office with that kind of behaviour, and the story would have been better had it stuck to reality. Romy puts up with Samuel only because the script demands it.
Kidman and Dickinson have absolutely no chemistry with one another, and it doesn’t help that Babygirl doesn’t let their mutual desire sizzle before locking them in a room together. I want to say it’s all contrived, but it’s not even that. When the two first kiss, it makes no sense why they do it. Romy has been looking at this guy, sure, but does she really want Samuel? And why? He is so aggravating that it negates how he is a fantasy fulfillment. And, what’s Samuel’s deal? Why’s he into Romy? And how did the two of them know that getting together wouldn’t also land them in trouble–neither had evinced any interest in the other, yet they try and kiss? I know I need to suspend my disbelief, but suspension has limits.
Let’s not even start with the BDSM/kink in this film. I keep reading about how erotic this film is, but Romy and Samuel’s affair starts with neither of them asking, nor knowing, what the other is looking for sexually. How can you get swept up in this torrid affair when we don’t even know what attracts them to each other? Babygirl dives right into the BDSM without addressing any of the issues around safety, essentially portraying Romy and Samuel’s affair as deeply unsafe. Have we learnt nothing from the 50 Shades of Gray trilogy–sexual encounters need to be consensual affairs, and communication is a must in anything related to BDSM. At least have one conversation about what you’re looking for before ordering a person around.
Had Babygirl restricted its story to just a woman figuring out what she wanted sexually, that’d be one thing. But no, it tries to throw in a ton of other stuff on top of that, as well. Romy’s desires are considered ‘dark,’ ‘not normal,’ and she’s in therapy for that, but that’s a plot point that should have been introduced much earlier in the story, and the fact she’s going to therapy at all is treated as an afterthought in Romy’s relationship with Jacob. This is a recurring theme in the film–characters do not communicate. That an otherwise powerful woman has been settling for second best when it comes to sexual intimacy in her decades-long, loving relationship with her husband should have been addressed more thoughtfully than it is. The over-bloated story also includes a subplot about a hard-working employee, Esme (Sophie Wilde), who keeps asking for a promotion and for the company to hire more women. Because there are so many plot points, few get their due and most are merely set dressing because the main crux of the film is to show one woman enjoying pleasure.
To make matters worse, the dialogue is clipped and unnatural, adding to the artificiality of the entire experience. All the actors try to power through the clunky script, though. Banderas, despite his curtailed and thankless role, is the most natural of the lot. I don’t know what to make of Dickinson. I’ve never seen him in anything before, so I have nothing to compare this performance to. His role is also underbaked–there to service Kidman’s Romy rather than to stand on his own–and I can’t gauge whether he did a good job or not. He has to pretend to be a stand-offish rude man, and he does that. I guess that’s good enough.
Most of the screen time is, of course, focused on Kidman. Look, she’s a great talent, there’s no denying that. And Babygirl is maybe Kidman’s boldest performance yet. She has these long one-take scenes of acting out Romy’s pleasure, and that is not easy. She also has prolonged scenes acting out Romy’s kink, and that must have been even more challenging. Kidman is believably uncomfortable or into it depending on where Romy’s at at any given moment. I credit Reijn for bringing out the best in some of the cringier scenes in Babygirl. Following the screening I attended, Reijn mentioned that, having been an actor once, she knows what an embarrassing job it is which is why she tends to act out all the scenes for and with her cast and crew to ensure no one feels uncomfortable when they’re filming those scenes. That comfort is obvious in the performances because Babygirl is raw with carnal pleasures and not afraid to show it.
That being said, I don’t think this is Kidman’s best performance. While she gives her all in the sex scenes, outside of them, she’s restrained and monotonous. Throughout the film, Romy looks confused, like she’s found herself somewhere she shouldn’t be. I want to say this is intentional, but where in the narrative does it suggest Romy doesn’t feel like she belongs, either at home or at work? Without that context, Kidman’s performance is tedious to watch.
This brings me to my biggest grievance with Babygirl. After the screening, Reijn mentioned that she was obsessed with 90s sexual thrillers like Basic Instinct, but those films were always made with the male gaze. She wanted to make her film from a different perspective. A commendable take, but it’s undermined by Romy randomly being insecure about her looks. There’s a moment in this film when Romy wants to make herself more attractive to Samuel, so she gets Botox done. And there are a few comments from other characters about how it’s changed her face in the film, but Romy doesn’t look different at all. It was bewildering to watch. At least make her look different. Or, is the issue that Romy is always doing Botox? How would we know since Kidman doesn’t look different from her normal self? Kidman had admitted to using Botox over a decade ago, but regretted it and stopped doing it. Her face has changed over the years, of course, but it’s the same from the start to the finish of the film.
And why posit that Romy, played by Nicole freaking Kidman, would even think to change anything about herself for any man? Why is she, of all people, insecure about herself and her beauty? Now, I know that anyone and everyone can be insecure about themselves, I’m not questioning that. What I’m questioning is: how are we making any difference when the only women in films who are allowed to enjoy their desires–be they kinky or not–look like Nicole Kidman? We’re not breaking any barriers here. This is like that scene in Barbie where Stereotypical Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, is having an existential crisis and that manifests in her not feeling ‘pretty’ anymore. That’s the worst feeling she can have? Babygirl should have explored why a seemingly perfect woman would need Botox. But it should have definitely cut the scene where Romy insists to Samuel she’s not beautiful. That was not needed.
Directorially, Reijn does a good job of inviting the audience into the scenes with the characters. With the help of cinematographer Jasper Wolf, Babygirl is an intimate and deliberately uncomfortable experience. But, if you’re looking for an erotic thriller which this film is touted as, you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’s not erotic, though it wants to be, and it’s definitely not a thriller, but that, Reijn said, was intentional. I’d call it a drama.
While the score by Cristobal Tapia de Veer ramps up the tension, I found it, and all the accompanying music excessively loud. I don’t know if it was the speaker system or the sound mixing, but my ears hurt.
I know that there’s going to be awards buzz around Babygirl and especially Kidman because this is not an easy film to sit through and not an easy one to act in. It’s bold, but the characters are underbaked, and the main plot about female sexual pleasure feels like lip service without an exploration of how to safely navigate and communicate one’s needs. Worst of all, Babygirl is cringey and unsexy.
