Babygirl
Updated: Feb 23, 2025
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson get kinky in this taunting but dramatically limp erotic drama.
Romy (Kidman) has concurred the business world, being a successful CEO of a highly advancing tech company, she also has concurred the family world with a loving husband (Antonio Banderas) and two daughters, but she hasn’t concurred her sexual desires. Since her husband hasn’t been able to make her cum for 19 years, Romy has led a secret life of watching BDSM pornography to get her going. Her secret fetish has been with her forever and has never been out the open, until she begins mentoring an intern: Samuel (Dickinson) who mysteriously deciphers her internal desires after she is strangely impressed by his talent as calming down a hyperactive dog. In a more organised 50 Shades type narrative, Romy becomes uncontrollably attracted to Samuel who proposes a formal consented arrangement for their encounters where Romy will do anything that Samuel says.
Nicole Kidman starring in a Christmas in New York set sex life crises marriage movie is one of my favourite types of movies, and there is more than an obvious mirroring of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) in Babygirl, especially the bright Christmas trees with luminous lighting which were a personal turn on for me. However, Halina Reijn’s forbidden desire and power play script leaves a lot to be desired within the masochistic psychology of Romy and her manipulative young playmate. While Kidman and Dickinson’s passive and passionate interactions is very structurally articulated with nuances and signals that tease and forbid their dark attraction, yet their sexual encounters are rather tame and not very explicit. The erotic narrative ultimately drives at the shamefulness for a powerful woman to have such desires, and that for her to really be herself is for these needs to be fulfilled. Banderas’ performance is very minor and only comes into play near the end, leaving the dynamics of their marriage unevenly unpacked which to me seems like the real source of conflict of the story.
Compared to this, Eyes Wide Shut is much more healthy and optimistic depiction of a healthy sexually charged marriage. Furthermore, I was thinking about Peter Strickland’s brilliant The Duke of Burgundy (2015), a film about the relational hardship of submitting to the other’s obsessions. Babygirl settles for a simplistic conclusion that lacks catharsis, though Kidman puts herself through the ringer for a courageous and vulnerable performance. Dickinson is very strong at playing an elusive dominator, who manages to play with Romy on every level with the slightest mannerisms, unfortunately his character is very underwritten and never fully fledged out, we never understand why he is such a good manipulator and why he seems to have expert knowledge of female sexuality.
Handsomely crafted and well-acted with provocative ideas, but Babygirl suffers from a script that doesn’t take things far enough in the bedroom with its taboo subject and doesn’t take enough time to have an open conversation about it afterwards.
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