Movie Review: 'Babygirl' is Bold and Exciting

Babygirl

Directed by Halina Reijn

Written by Halina Reijn

Starring Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas

Release Date December 25th, 2024

Published December 5th, 2024

Babygirl is a movie about breaking through the surface to get to something real, a real emotion, a real reaction, a true desire. Beneath the glossy veneer of the life of a multi-millionaire CEO with a handsome playwright husband and two exceptionally well adjusted daughters, is a roiling cauldron of sexual frustration and the twisted, perverse desire to risk it all for the thrill of the elicit and forbidden. The forbidden in this case is a 20 something intern named Samuel with six pack abs and a manner precisely used to push past the boundaries of propriety and polite adherence to expectations.

Nicole Kidman stars in Babygirl as Romy, the high powered CEO of a tech company that is putting many people out of work. Romy justifies this by claiming that her company is relieving people of menial work but this is just her way of justifying profiting from other people’s pain. The grease in the wheels of capitalism is the blood of those at the bottom of the economic ladder but we all politely try and pretend that’s not true. All of us, except for Samuel (Harris Dickinson) who, on his first day as an intern at Romy’s company, bluntly asks the CEO how she feels about putting so many people out of work.

But Samuel is no social justice warrior, the bold question is asked with the intent of putting the domineering CEO in a defensive position. It works. Throughout the subsequent relationship between Romy and Samuel this pattern will persist where he is the one person in her life who refuses to politely keep quiet, who refuses to simply adhere to expectations. He transgresses all of the boundaries expected of someone in his position versus someone in Romy’s position and this defiance is what makes him so appealing to Romy. With Samuel, there is no pretense. Via Samuel, Romy doesn’t have to uphold any image, she can give herself over to base desire in a way she cannot do in any other aspect of her life. She can be real in a way that flies in the face of her image.

It would be easy to get caught up in the notion of dominance and submission in Romy and Samuel’s relationship, but that’s really just kink. The core of the relationship is subversion. What drives Romy toward Samuel is rebellion against her own perfectly manicured image. She’s constrained by the expectations around her, the expectations of a female CEO, the expectations to be a role model for other women, the expectations of being a mother and a CEO. Her life is exhausting in its perfection and there is something exciting and cathartic about a relationship where her function is to pursue her own unrestrained pleasure without having to serve an image or an expectation.

Romy is sexually unfulfilled in her marriage to Jacob, played in a perverse bit of stunt casting by Antonio Banderas. As someone who came of age in the 90s, the notion of Antonio Banderas being cast as a husband incapable of satisfying a woman is a brilliantly subversive bit of casting. Banderas was emblematic of modern machismo in the 90s and early 2000s. He looked, and still looks, like a man who was brought to life to be your wife’s hall pass and the man she was thinking of while she was sleeping with you. It’s wonderfully perverse to cast him as a sexually inept cuckold.

Nicole Kidman is also cast to perfection in Babygirl. Part of the unspoken appeal of Nicole Kidman is the notion of getting past her sleek outward appearance to the real human being underneath. Nicole Kidman is a real human being but she’s also perfect cheekbones, elegantly coiffed tresses, the epitome of unattainable Hollywood glamour. Watching that image be deconstructed to its base humanity is our Nicole Kidman kink as fans. Yes, that’s not every Nicole Kidman performance, movies like Destroyer or The Hours don’t play on Kidman’s perceived perfection, but some of her best work gives us the chance to see what's behind that perfect face, those piercing eyes, and crisp demeanor.

In this way, Babygirl isn’t tilling new ground but writer-director Halina Reijn has a few tricks up her sleeve beyond drilling down on her star. In the performance of Harris Dickinson she plays with modern notions of professionalism, propriety and politeness. She gets political and tackles thorny issues of the modern workplace. This is especially thrilling when Romy tries to end her relationship with Samuel and rather than him being this perfect vessel of manipulation, he’s shown to be vulnerable, calculating, but vulnerable. His threats about taking the relationship public or going to H.R aren’t empty but they also don’t come off as threats as much as the flailing of a young man who doesn’t fully comprehend the consequences of his choices.

This idea is underlined in a brilliant scene in which Samuel dances to the George Michael song Father Figure in a hotel room with Romy. He’s putting on a show, for sure, but it’s a naive form of seduction. Samuel knows how attractive he is but he doesn’t know much more than that. He perhaps hasn’t thought this relationship through entirely and while he knows how to manipulate Romy, he doesn’t appear interested in destroying her. Rather, he appears more curious about how far he can push things, explore his own kinks, and get what he wants. This is no Fatal Attraction, it’s something deeper and far more interesting than the preachy, heteronormative, moralism of that 80s thriller.

Where Fatal Attraction demands that the status quo be reinforced and returned to, Babygirl leaves room kink, it leaves room for moral ambiguity, and it gives the protagonist a banger of an ending that demonstrates a newfound control over her desires and how they fit into her well manicured image. There is a wonderfully transgressive quality to the ending of Babygirl that reveals the rotten core of films where powerful men are nearly destroyed by their moral failings only to return safely to the cocoon of traditional marriage and family. Romy may go back to her family and her husband, but she’s bringing her desires and her kinks with her. The moral of this story is that having it all can include the job, the family, and a satisfying orgasm.

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