Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, the new erotic drama starring Nicole Kidman, exists in a specific realm alongside Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful (actually, nearly all of Lyne’s output), movies that subsist on a diet of sexual hedonism and existential dread. Like those steamy flicks from a bygone era, Reijn’s takes on prurience, power dynamics (in and out of the bedroom), and the confines of female empowerment bask in carnality even as they subvert our expectations of it. Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies), who also penned the script, knows that the story of an older woman having an affair with a young buck is pretty hackneyed by this point; you might even catch a sanitized version of it on the Hallmark Channel this holiday season. But, similar to filmmakers such as French auteur Catherine Breillat, Reijn utilizes this convention to shave layers off her characters in hopes of finding something relevant glittering in the dark. These jewels of wisdom might not shine with precision, but the journey spent acquiring them is compelling, ethereal, and surprisingly messy. Kind of like sex.
Nicole Kidman plays Romy Mathis, a high-powered CEO of a tech company that’s pushing the use of robotics in warehouses. Like her products, Romy is an automaton, a robust businesswoman who lives and dies by her daily regimen. At work, she struts past the employees with a strained smile and a steely veneer. At home, she has two teenage daughters and a doting husband (Antonio Banderas), a Broadway director who’s oblivious as she fakes her orgasms and sneaks off to masturbate to Internet porn after they have sex.
One morning she meets the new interns at work, including Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a 20-something oddball who stares at her for a little too long. After he asks if she can be his mentor, a voluntary part of the job, she reluctantly agrees. In their meeting, Samuel is cocky and assertive, searching for cracks in Romy’s porcelain mask. Although she’s offended by his cutting, sly remarks, he smirks, knowing he’s getting to her. Instinctively, he knows she’s unsatisfied, and he’s willfully taking control.
The movie really belongs to Nicole Kidman, who’s brilliant. She’s never exhibited comparable vulnerability or tread such dangerous turf.
Romy and Samuel’s initial interactions are depicted as a diplomatic game of cat and mouse that’s fascinating and laced with biting humor. Although the previews say otherwise, Babygirl is quite funny, often uncomfortably so. Reijn has a way of playing off-key notes with precision, shedding light on moments where awkwardness and intention share the same troublesome space. Neither of them can show their cards, and yet they’re excited by testing each other’s boundaries. In one scene, Samuel anonymously sends Romy a glass of milk, to a table she’s sharing with colleagues at an after-work gathering. She drinks it in one gulp while staring at him; as he leaves, he sidles up behind her and whispers, “Good girl.” There are other, similar moments that crackle with villainous humor, distinguishing this film from unintentionally hilariously prosaic movies like Fifty Shades of Grey.
Their meticulous flirtation is so potent you’re almost disappointed when they fall headlong into a BDSM-inspired affair. But the sex in the movie is equally dangerous and alluring. Instead of portraying their union satirically (Secretary) or with the earnestness of a perfume ad (9½ Weeks), Reijn approaches it with a Bertolucci-inspired urgency. She creates the atmosphere, gets out of the way, and lets the chemistry speak for itself. There are a couple of cringe-inducing moments, but these two are processing some deep-seated issues, and you’re supposed to wince. Their liaison is both freewheeling and rough, intimate and discordant, familiar and new. They create boundaries, only to stretch them to the limits. Smartly, with her stylistic finesse, Reijn gives the audience the space to absorb it all and even project our own thoughts into the narrative.
More important than the sex, Romy and Samuel are discovering a refuge from the world. Within the confines of the hotel room, they’re enjoying the feeling of living within their own skin, possibly for the first time. Through Jasper Wolf’s lush cinematography and Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s pulsating score, Reijn creates a clandestine, almost subconscious domain where the players communicate through movement and nuance instead of words. The filmmaking is audacious and fluid, with the camera pivoting from a hotel room to a boardroom in a swinging arc. The needle drops and montages are reminiscent of films from the ’90s, like Trainspotting or Buffalo 66. And while some viewers might roll their eyes during scenes like the one in which Samuel dances to George Michael’s “Father Figure” in front of a half-clad Romy, I was pulled into their hypnotic, oozy universe. For these two, sex is more than a place where they can get their jollies, it’s a spiritual discovery.
Of course it doesn’t take long for their bubble to burst and spill into the world outside. Antonio Banderas gives a crushing performance as the emasculated husband. And although his character lacks interiority, Dickinson doesn’t merely dial in the “sexy guy” role, he imbues Samuel with an odd, agitated ruddiness. He’s needy, hungry, and driven more by false dominance than by love or self-knowledge.
But the movie belongs to Nicole Kidman, who’s brilliant. At 57, she’s never exhibited comparable vulnerability or tread such dangerous turf. Even if the movie is framed as a thriller, the real suspense lies in watching Romy discard her refined mask and discover her dormant identity. The irony is that her character has to break the rules, such as sleeping with an employee, to acquire self-knowledge. Unfortunately, she needs to experience subservience, disorder, and deception in order to untangle the repression that’s been smothering her for so long. Whether amoral or not, it’s a conceit that reflects what so many women are forced to endure: to fulfill a social contract while suppressing the urge to enjoy life without consequence or judgement.
If Babygirl has any issues, it’s the loose narrative that tries to address all of its themes. At times, Reijn struggles to wedge in satirical statements regarding corporate power, only to have them crumble in the third act. Compared to the film’s more personal moments, proclamations about corporate America feel trite. A few storylines also flail toward the end, never to be resolved. But that’s a minor critique for a film that succeeds where so many recent ones have failed: It maintains an intimate proximity to its protagonist. Like the feminine version of Paul Schrader, Halina Reijn maintains a startling intimacy with her protagonist, never deviating, continuing her excavation until the last layer of her persona has been plundered. Even if you don’t believe Reijn discovered anything notable in this swamp of human frailty (I believe she did), you can’t say she didn’t give it her all. ❖
Chad Byrnes has been a film critic for the L.A. Weekly and the Village Voice for six years. He lives in Los Angeles.