- Director: Halina Reijn
- Screenplay: Halina Reijn
- Cast: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde, Antonio Banderas
- Cinematography: Jasper Wolf
- Editing: Matthew Hannam
- Score: Cristobal Tapia de Veer
- Genre: Erotic thriller
- Runtime: 115 minutes
In her second ‘cougar’ role in the past 12 months (the other being ‘A Family Affair‘), Nicole Kidman is Romy Mathis, a high-up CEO of a tech firm (which concerns itself with reducing the number of human factory workers in favour of robots etc., a minor detail). She has a swanky apartment, two daughters and a loving husband (Antonio Banderas). Yet this obviously isn’t enough for her – he doesn’t satisfy her sexually. Along comes an intern half her age, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), who awakens the kinky side she’d never thought she’d get to indulge in. He holds the keys – one little phone call would bring her world crashing down. For Romy, the threat is the allure.
‘Babygirl‘ does not strike me as a ‘feminist’ piece of filmmaking – sure, Romy has agency; she could risk everything and walk away. Alas, she opts to degrade herself, getting on all fours and drinking milk out of a saucer on the floor of a seedy hotel (weird kink but okay). She’s ultimately doing this because ‘the man’ in this situation orders her to. It was her choice to cross that line and betray her husband’s trust in the first place though. I find my sympathy for Romy severely limited; maybe she’s into humiliation but dishonouring her marriage vows isn’t sexy.
I’m no prude – but the sexual content made me uncomfortable. I guess I’m vanilla. In that case, Romy must be triple chocolate chip with a Cadbury Flake on top. Still compelling nevertheless, perhaps since I was eager to see if her life would implode.
And if we’re talking about stiff things in the bedroom, have you seen Nicole Kidman’s face? Yikes.
My rating: 6 / 10
SilverScreen 