Once upon a time, Steven Soderbergh opined \u201cas soon as an actor takes their clothes off in a movie, you’re watching a documentary\u2026 you break, I break with a film. When somebody takes their clothes off, I’m not watching the character anymore. I go, \u2018Oh my god, I’m seeing XYZ with their clothes off.\u2019\u201d This is the fascinating fissure of movie stars in the modern era; we\u2019re 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\u2019s daughter makes fun of her Botox.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And they must also get out in front of it, so Babygirl<\/em> begins\u2014during the production company logos, even\u2014with 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 <\/em>cum\u2014from watching an encounter of the much rougher variety, a stark divergence from the genteel lovemaking of her marital bed. It\u2019s a remarkably efficient opening, pinpointing the kind of sex Romy gets, and its contrast to the kind of sex she wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s no climber, or a himbo; he senses something, intuitively, about her, and knows exactly how to address it. \u201cI think you like to be told what to do,\u201d he blurts out, in an early conversation, and soon he\u2019s unlocking perhaps more than he has bargained for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Narratively and thematically, Reijn and her characters are playing with dynamite\u2014the 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<\/em> (and few films since). But it\u2019s 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\u2019s not some choreographed, storyboarded thing. \u201cIs that what you want?\u201d he asks, because he doesn\u2019t know, and she does, but she\u2019s not brave enough to say it. \u201cJust admit that this is what you want,\u201d he pleads. \u201cBe honest.\u201d And then they\u2019re talking about consent, in a mainstream movie, which is a big deal to begin with\u2014but this is a movie that\u2019s smart and savvy enough to understand that talking about consent is also very hot<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Babygirl <\/em>knows what it\u2019s 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\u2019s potentially undercutting her job and jeopardizing her family, but as she puts it\u2014in a scene of next-level acting by Kidman\u2014\u201cThere has to be danger, there have to be things at stake.\u201d It\u2019s rare to find a filmmaker who even understands<\/em> that, much less is savvy enough to convey it within a dramatic narrative without seeming like they\u2019re making a movie about kamikaze pilots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alas, this is<\/em> 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\u2014the score is hardcore but the music cues are mighty goofy), it\u2019s forgivable; what she achieves in Babygirl<\/em> far outweighs its mild shortcomings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Babygirl” is out Christmas Day.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/babygirl2-1024x683.jpg\")
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