‘Babygirl’: Venice Review

Dir/scr: Halina Reijn. US. 2024. 114mins 

Halina Reijn’s third feature works better in the bedroom than in the boardroom. Babygirl is an erotic drama about a powerful CEO who embarks on an ill-advised affair with a much younger intern, finally accessing the sexual desires this tightly-wound woman has never permitted herself to enjoy. Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson are excellent as these carnal combatants, each of their characters jockeying for control. But the writer-director’s larger ideas — about sexism in the workplace and the feelings of shame surrounding sexual kinks — fail to burn as hot as the two leads’ fiery chemistry. 

 Kidman makes Romy’s sexual awakening startlingly alive

Babygirl premiered in a Venice Competition spot, winning Best Actress for Kidman, and will open in the US on Christmas Day – appropriate as this film is set around the winter holiday. (The UK release is planned for January 10.) Dutch actress/director Reijn’s first feature, Instinct, similarly explored a secretive attraction, between a psychologist and her imprisoned client, while her second feature, English language horror-comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies, helped cement her arthouse bona fides. Babygirl is more of a sexy, provocative prestige picture, with A24 no doubt seeking awards consideration for Kidman. 

Happy wife and mother Romy (Kidman) runs a New York tech company that specialises in warehouse robotics, and indeed there is a sleek efficiency to the way she runs her life both at work and at home. Driven and unflappable, she loves her husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas), but her world is disoriented once she meets Samuel (Dickinson), a new intern who is unintimidated by her. Soon it becomes clear that his interest in Romy is more than professional — and she too is drawn to him, even though she knows that giving into temptation could destroy everything she has built.

Early in Babygirl, Reijn hints at the fissures in Romy’s seemingly perfect life when, after strenuous sex with Jacob, Romy retreats to another room to secretly watch porn and achieve the orgasm her husband cannot provide. A little later, a seeming throwaway comment Romy makes about a childhood in which she was raised in cults and communes further suggests private embarrassments she has spent her adult life papering over. Quickly, though, Samuel sees through her facade, informing her that he knows she wants to be told what to do. That highly inappropriate comment should get him fired but Romy is seduced, and a torrid affair soon develops — one in which she must obey his commands. In no time at all, she is getting down on all fours and crawling over to collect a candy treat from his hand.

Indie films such as The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed have explored ‘nontraditional’ relationships involving dominance and submission, so Babygirl’s racy reveal is not especially noteworthy. But what is magnetic is Samuel’s clear confidence as he pushes Romy’s buttons both sexually and intellectually. Dickinson exuded a coiled tension in films like Triangle Of Sadness, but he’s especially striking as a man who helps Romy unleash the desires she has tried to repress. Samuel clearly loves their sexual gamesmanship, although the character’s enigmatic nature leaves him a teasing riddle.

Kidman strips down literally and emotionally once Romy submits to Samuel. The performance, which occasionally finds Romy allowing herself to be humiliated, is expertly calibrated — even when, in later reels, her character inexplicably behaves in ways that run counter to the person we’ve come to know. Much of the film’s suspense stems from this riveting consensual relationship, which operates on a heightened plane driven by the danger of what they’re getting themselves involved in, and Kidman makes Romy’s sexual awakening startlingly alive.

Unfortunately, Babygirl cannot sustain that initial intrigue. It is perhaps inevitable in films about affairs that, after the opening rush of passion, a predictable trajectory must follow, which includes the sneaking around, the concern about getting caught and the tryst’s eventual disclosure. Reijn tries to sidestep these problems by turning Babygirl into a study of Romy, who ought to be a role model for her female subordinates. But as devoted as Kidman is to fleshing out Romy’s secrets and flaws, those details never feel like much more than superficial adornments — while the exploration of Romy’s sexual insecurities don’t cut very deeply. 

Babygirl means to champion a female sexuality that is unburdened by shame or inadequacy, but those ideas play out better when Romy and Samuel navigate them behind closed doors than when Reijn baldly underlines them elsewhere. The characters’ affair may be fascinatingly complicated, but the film’s wider commentary ends up being simplistic by comparison.