Review: Babygirl

It’s become a bit of a cliché to applaud an actor’s “bravery” when they’re doing a sexual role, but there’s really no more appropriate descriptor for what Nicole Kidman is doing in Halina Reijn’s Babygirl. And it’s not even the sexuality that prompts it. Yes, there are sex scenes; yes, she appears nude; yes, she participates in a domme-sub relationship onscreen. It’s more than that. During the focal couple’s first real, physical encounter, when he  touches her for the first time and goes to work on her, Reijn holds on Kidman’s face, in a fairly tight close-up, for what seems like an eternity—and Kidman lets us in. It’s stunning, how vulnerable she is in that scene; this is the most private moment an actor can show us, and even when it’s within the confines of the character (and that’s certainly the case here), it still feels like we’re privy to something we’re not supposed to see. 

Once upon a time, Steven Soderbergh opined “as soon as an actor takes their clothes off in a movie, you’re watching a documentary… you break, I break with a film. When somebody takes their clothes off, I’m not watching the character anymore. I go, ‘Oh my god, I’m seeing XYZ with their clothes off.’” This is the fascinating fissure of movie stars in the modern era; we’re so obsessed with celebrity that woman-of-a-certain-age Nicole Kidman doing a sexual role will dominate The Discourse so she must take on the extra burden of disappearing even further into the role. (Reijn is, of course, a very smart filmmaker, and knows we will never fully forget; there is a scene where the Kidman character’s daughter makes fun of her Botox.)

And they must also get out in front of it, so Babygirl begins—during the production company logos, even—with the undeniable sounds of sex, heavy breathing and moaning, and then a solid, quaking orgasm. This is how we meet Romy (Kidman), whose husband (Antonio Banderas) then tells her he loves her. But then she tiptoes out to her home office, to secretly watch porn and actually cum—from watching an encounter of the much rougher variety, a stark divergence from the genteel lovemaking of her marital bed. It’s a remarkably efficient opening, pinpointing the kind of sex Romy gets, and its contrast to the kind of sex she wants.

She finds it soon thereafter. The CEO and founder of a robotics company, Romy meets a handsome, young male intern named Samuel (Harris Dickinson). Her first words to him are asking for a coffee, but he’s no climber, or a himbo; he senses something, intuitively, about her, and knows exactly how to address it. “I think you like to be told what to do,” he blurts out, in an early conversation, and soon he’s unlocking perhaps more than he has bargained for. 

Narratively and thematically, Reijn and her characters are playing with dynamite—the specifics of this relationship allow her to tinker with not only dynamics of power, but age, gender, and class. The sexuality throughout the picture is explicit, coupling with a frankness and candor that legit recalls Last Tango in Paris (and few films since). But it’s remarkably honest in those scenes. Their first real encounter is refreshingly clumsy and tentative; these are two people who are figuring each other out, so it’s not some choreographed, storyboarded thing. “Is that what you want?” he asks, because he doesn’t know, and she does, but she’s not brave enough to say it. “Just admit that this is what you want,” he pleads. “Be honest.” And then they’re talking about consent, in a mainstream movie, which is a big deal to begin with—but this is a movie that’s smart and savvy enough to understand that talking about consent is also very hot.

Babygirl knows what it’s like to be inside a relationship like this, how it feels when the thing you need, on a basic and feral level, exceeds your control of it. Romy knows (and the film does too) that she’s potentially undercutting her job and jeopardizing her family, but as she puts it—in a scene of next-level acting by Kidman—“There has to be danger, there have to be things at stake.” It’s rare to find a filmmaker who even understands that, much less is savvy enough to convey it within a dramatic narrative without seeming like they’re making a movie about kamikaze pilots.

Alas, this is a dramatic narrative, and it falls apart a bit in the home stretch, when the conflicts and conclusions veer into the kind of conventional and predictable territory that, until then, Reijn has studiously avoided. But if she fumbles there (and occasionally beforehand—the score is hardcore but the music cues are mighty goofy), it’s forgivable; what she achieves in Babygirl far outweighs its mild shortcomings. 

“Babygirl” is out Christmas Day.

Jason Bailey is a film critic and historian, and the author of five books. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Playlist, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Rolling Stone, Slate, and more. He is the co-host of the podcast "A Very Good Year."

Back to top