While the internet continues to debate the “necessity” of sex scenes in cinema year in year out, the sickos and freaks among us are crying out for more filmmakers who refuse to shy away from showing carnal pleasures on screen. To deny the existence and power of desire is to deny a valuable (often fun!) part of the human experience – collectively we’ve been doing it for thousands of years, but in much of society it’s still considered more distasteful to simulate sex than to depict someone being violently murdered.
In Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, corporate high-flier Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman) knows all about the power of denial. Despite her husband Jacob’s (Antonio Banderas) clear adoration of her, she’s never once orgasmed during sex with him in 19 years of marriage – she makes do with sneaking off to masturbate while watching BDSM porn. Romy has convinced herself that her desire for a more dominant sexual partner is shameful, instead throwing all her energy into running her successful tech automation company, but when her assistant Esmé (Sophie Wilde) introduces her to Samuel (Harris Dickinson), the new, strong-willed intern at Tensile Robotics, her carefully repressed appetite comes back with new voracity.
Reijn first explored illicit desire and gendered power dynamics in her feature debut Instinct (where a prison therapist develops an infatuation with her violent, charismatic patient, who is a convicted serial rapist) and Babygirl is perhaps more palatable in a sense – the older woman still possesses the traditional position of superiority (her job) but her intrigue and infatuation with a younger man pushes her to rescind some of her hard-won control. But as Samuel – projecting boyish confidence but preternatural wisdom – points out, “I think you like being told what to do.”
What Romy discovers with Samuel is not the existence of her sexual desires, but the space to explore them. Meeting for illicit trysts in opulent hotel rooms (her choice) and grimy underground raves (his choice) they find each other again and again with magnetic intensity, despite attempts to call it off. The chemistry between Kidman and Dickinson is stratospheric but not purely sexual – Romy and Samuel are as vicious with each other as they are tender, each able to see something in the other that no one has even tried looking for. And while Kidman has long possessed a glassiness that makes her hypnotic to watch, here there is real vulnerability too, in the nervous dart of her eyes and the way she squirms as she tries to hide her naked body from Samuel’s unwavering gaze.
Dickinson – who in less than a decade has built an excellent acting CV – matches her beat for beat as the enigmatic would-be dom in their dynamic, and the distance the audience retains from both characters – only hearing their backstories in occasional snippets – dispels the idea that there is some defining “flaw” that creates the desire for a dom/sub dynamic. Reijn’s characters are fleshed out by performance rather than didacticism, and the entire cast is mesmerising, from Kidman and Dickinson to Banderas – cast against type as a slightly goofy man who struggles to satisfy his wife – and Wilde as Romy’s shadow who has learned shrewd operation from the best.
Crucially Reijn’s script retains a sense of humour, careful to illustrate that good sex isn’t just about orgasms and fantasy fulfilment – it’s about pleasure. The degree of awkwardness that Romy and Samuel experience while testing the boundaries of their relationship illustrates the complexities of BDSM and the need for clear communication as well as acceptance of the fact that yes, sometimes it’s kind of awkward (in one charming moment, Samuel bursts out laughing after trying to authoritatively command Romy to get on her knees for the first time). The age gap between the two is acknowledged particularly within their differing ideas around sex; Samuel, much younger, is more progressive, though quite insistent that Romy doesn’t treat him with kid gloves.
It’s the sort of intelligent, elegant adult filmmaking that is frequently lacking in modern cinema, approaching a complex theme not only with nuance and empathy but refreshing candour, all while being genuinely erotic and stylish. Jaspar Wolf’s intimate cinematography and Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s breathy, intense score complement Kurt and Bart’s considered costume design, and the “show don’t tell” approach works wonders for characters who frequently struggle to communicate.
At the same time, Reijn’s wry swipes at the empty language of pinkwashed corporate feminism land much better than the Gen Z jokes of Sarah DeLappe’s Bodies Bodies Bodies script, and an exchange about the “male fantasy” of “female masochism” wryly exorcises another old myth about what (some) women want. Babygirl joins Secretary and The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed in the still relatively limited canon of cinema that takes this much-maligned subsect of female sexual desire seriously, while also serving as a compelling psychodrama about the intricacies of trust and understanding, even in a long-standing relationship.
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