‘Babygirl’ Review
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde, Antonio Banderas, Esther McGregor, Vaughn Reilly, Victor Slezak | Written and Directed by Halina Reijn
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson star in this erotic office drama from writer-director Halina Reijn’s follow-up to last year’s horror favourite Bodies Bodies Bodies. Provocative and crackling with tension, Babygirl explores ideas of desire, control and illicit sexuality from a decidedly Gen Z perspective, while playing interesting games with established erotic thriller conventions.
Kidman plays Romy Mathis, the powerful CEO of a New York robotics company, who seemingly has it all, including two teenage daughters (Esther McGregor and Vaughan Reilly) and an apparently happy marriage to successful theatre director Jacob (Antonio Banderas). However, there are early hints that something is missing, because – in the opening scene – after faking an orgasm with Jacob, Romy sneaks off to a different room and masturbates to dodgy daddy porn on her laptop.
When she meets 20-something Samuel (Dickinson) in her new crop of office interns, her interest is immediately piqued when he openly challenges her in the group introduction, and before long she has agreed to his proposed mentoring session, where he cheekily tells her, “I think you like being told what to do.” Thereafter, the pair embark on a cautiously consensual clandestine affair, with Romy perpetually torn between indulging her subservient desires and knowing that she could lose everything if their relationship was exposed.
At first glance, Babygirl strongly resembles the kind of classic erotic thrillers that were so prevalent in the 1990s – think Lara Flynn Boyle seducing Timothy Hutton in 1993’s The Temp, or Diane Lane cheating on Richard Gere with a younger man in Unfaithful (2002). To that end, you might think that you know where it’s going, but Reijn continually has fun with the expected Fatal Attraction-style tropes, subverting expectations to blackly comic effect.
The best example of this comes in the scene where Samuel shows up at Romy’s home, a set-up we’ve seen multiple times before, but here it plays out completely differently. The upshot of this is that we’re never entirely sure of Samuel’s intentions, which adds an extra layer of delicious tension.
That tension is also present in the push and pull of the relationship itself, which is constantly pushing and exploring boundaries, as both the audience and Romy herself wonder just how far she is willing to go. To that end, Reijn maintains exquisite tonal control throughout, keeping a tight balance between high tension, gasp-inducing I-can’t-believe-she-did-that moments and black comedy, not least in the sequences where Samuel tries to get her to behave like an obedient dog.
What makes Babygirl stand out is its decidedly Gen Z perspective, not just in terms of the issues of consent, but also in its ideas of sexuality and emotion. Two lines of dialogue in particular stand out in this respect, first when Samuel tells Romy, “I don’t want to feel this way – why are you making me feel this way?” (a Gen Z line to end all Gen Z lines) and secondly, in one of the film’s funniest moments, Samuel correcting Jacob by telling him, “No, that’s an outdated idea about sexuality”.
Kidman won the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival for her performance here, and she’s on terrific form, ensuring that you feel every agonising moment of her conflict and every flicker of desire. Dickinson is equally good, generating palpable chemistry with Kidman, while keeping his own desires and goals tantalisingly under wraps.
In short, Babygirl is a thoroughly enjoyable office romance drama that cleverly updates the erotic thriller genre for the 21st century and has a lot of fun in the process.
