Babygirl

Nicole Kidman excels as a high-powered businesswoman who threatens everything for a liaison with a young intern.

Fatal attraction: Harris Dickinson and Nicole Kidman
Image courtesy of Entertainment Film Dists Ltd.

Any film that opens with an orgasm is likely to draw attention to itself. But Nicole Kidman’s climax is more Meg Ryan than Michelle Williams (cf. Blue Valentine) and she has to satisfy herself solo a few minutes later. Romy Mathis is married to a Broadway theatre director (a sensitive, charismatic Antonio Banderas), has a Yale diploma, two loving teenage daughters, a roomy Manhattan apartment, a house in the country and runs her own robotics company (Tensile Automation). She has it all but still feels sexually dissatisfied.

For anybody who saw Nicole Kidman in Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer will know she’s not averse to sexual novelty. Here the sex is run-of-the-mill ‘kink’, but is presented in such a voyeuristic way that it is deeply uncomfortable, which is presumably the point. Ms Kidman gives it all her all, recalling an actress of a not dissimilar age (Demi Moore) who totally went for it in The Substance and was nominated alongside Nicole for a Golden Globe (and won it). Interestingly, both actresses are seen attempting to stop the march of time with the aid of cosmetic surgery, appear completely naked and are directed by female European directors. It’s as if American men just can’t face such provocative material (Luca Guadagnino is Italian).

Nicole has never been afraid to expose herself if the role (and the director) was right, and here she immerses herself in scenes of such erotic tension that it feels indecent to watch. Furthermore, her character, Romy, is seen getting Botox jabs, alongside other cosmetic treatments, prompting her eldest, Isabel (Esther McGregor), to mock: “You look really weird. Like a dead fish!” For the actress, if not her character, vanity is not on the menu. And then a man half Romy’s age, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), not so much steals her heart, as her libido. He’s not impressed by the trappings of power and wealth and embarks on a treacherous game of sexual politics and, even as a lowly intern at Tensile, suggests to Romy, “I think you like to be told what to do.”

The Dutch director Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies) keeps us on edge by gazing at this rarefied world with the aid of a handheld camera, deploying long moments without a single note of music and paring away the gloss with a raw colour palette. But then Reijn is not afraid to introduce a moment of the surreal, such as Harris Dickinson’s topless snake dance to George Michael’s ‘Father Figure’, recalling Barry Keoghan’s equally hedonistic boogie to ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ in Saltburn. As an exposé of the power dynamic in both the workplace and the bedroom, Babygirl is a frightening exploration of sexual amorality in high places. And thanks to Dickinson’s nonchalant intensity and Kidman’s sexual neediness and vulnerability, it is all the more disturbing. And riveting.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde, Antonio Banderas, Esther McGregor, Vaughan Reilly, Victor Slezak, Leslie Silva, Gaite Jansen, Robert Farrior, Bartley Booz, Anoop Desai, Dolly Wells, Gabrielle Policano. 

Dir Halina Reijn, Pro David Hinojosa, Halina Reijn and Julia Oh, Screenplay Halina Reijn, Ph Jasper Wolf, Pro Des Stephen Carter, Ed Matthew Hannam, Music Cristobal Tapia de Veer, Costumes Kurt and Bart, Dialect coach Thom Jones, Intimacy coordinator Lizzy Talbot. 

2AM/Man Up Films-Entertainment Film Dists Ltd.
114 mins. USA/The Netherlands. 2024. US Rel: 25 December 2024. UK Rel: 10 January 2025. Cert. 18.