“With slick production design, playful but focused direction, clever writing, and two central performances that create something bigger than the sum of its parts, Babygirl is an ambitious step up from Reijn’s English-language debut.”
“Stranger fucking danger.” For some reason this line from Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn popped into mind while watching Halina Reijn’s provocative Babygirl. Probably because the stranger in this film is truly dangerous. But with a protagonist that is sexually attracted to danger, that makes for an explosive cocktail in this erotic thriller for the MeToo era, a film in which discovering the beast inside us is a liberating but emotional rollercoaster. Starring a no-holds-barred Nicole Kidman in a brave role for a star of her stature opposite a prowling, predatory-yet-innocent Harris Dickinson, Babygirl is a tense, sexy, and often surprisingly funny film in which the traditional roles in inappropriate relationships in the workplace are flipped, and so is the power dynamic. Sure to wag some tongues (one already did at the end of the press screening), Reijn follows up her Gen Z horror-comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies with a modern and sharper, feminist update to ’90s sleaze-thrillers that should definitely have appeal to general audiences, especially younger ones, and not in the least because of some fantastic needle drops.
Romy (Kidman) is a top executive at Tensile, a company in the warehouse automation field. She is a tough businesswoman during her long workdays, but still manages to be a good wife and mother at home, to her husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas, who at the end of the film devours the acting meat that is thrown to him) and their two teenage daughters Isabel (Esther McGregor) and Nora (Vaughan Reilly). Although the ‘good wife’ part is perhaps debatable. Is it? Is faking an orgasm every time you have sex with your husband, to then quietly get yourself off watching some ‘daddy porn’ a sign of being ‘bad’, whatever that means? Romy wrestles with these questions, and that isn’t made any easier when a certain Samuel (Dickinson) joins the company as an intern, although we don’t learn his name until well into the film. She first saw him outside the building calming down a rabid dog, and immediately her interest was piqued. It seems like he sniffed her out, because what starts with irreverence slowly becomes a game of dominance once Samuel starts prodding and pushing Romy’s buttons. It is exactly what she is looking for, even if she puts up a weak façade of resistance: a way to break out of a gilded cage she herself has created. Things turn sexual, then dangerous. Samuel invades Romy’s space more and more, also her private space, but playing this dangerous game is turning her on even if she knows it is wrong on so many levels. And it is bound to get out.
The most interesting thing about Babygirl is its play on power dynamics in the workplace, and how that can cut both ways. Obviously Romy’s affair with Samuel crosses all boundaries, but both the gender and the power reversal and the fact that it is consensual make this a far from cut-and-dried case. It is the man who holds the power in this relationship, but he is also the subordinate, although Samuel can break Romy’s career at any time (and subtly threatens to do so several times). Yet this is exactly the kind of danger that appeals to Romy, stuck in a loving but dull marriage to theater director Jacob. She knows it’s wrong, but her carnal desires take over. Samuel on the other hand seems to know what he is doing, but at the same time is experimenting as well, sometimes even thrown himself by the things he makes Romy do. Their relationship is a continuous cat-and-mouse game, a power struggle about who’s on top; it is a struggle Romy perhaps enjoys more than Samuel, even if she is the degraded one and he the dominant. Once another woman comes into the picture, Romy’s assistant Esme (Sophie Wilde), Romy tries to reverse the roles, sometimes with comedic effect, but she is in too deep now. She is repeatedly reminded that what she is doing is wrong (she has to deal with a daughter who cheats on her girlfriend, for instance), confronted with her own failure to ‘keep it in her pants’, so to speak, and this gnaws at her; but it is so alluring, so exciting, so she continues.
While comparisons to films like Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction are obvious and a bit too easy, and while 2002’s Secretary, another film with a masochistic relationship between an executive and a subordinate (but with a notably more traditional gender dynamic), is a touchstone, the clearest reference for Babygirl is Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer. That film too had a forbidden affair, though not in the workplace, where the older woman should know better but the younger man was in control and playing on the woman’s desires. A big part of that comparison lies in Reijn’s mise-en-scène and how she uses the background to define Samuel’s character, much like Breillat did with the character of Theo. Dickinson, a hulking figure to begin with, much like Theo’s actor Samuel Kircher, prowls in the background while Kidman is in focus, intrigued by the young man in the ill-fitting suit. He is like a caged animal, a predator ready to pounce on his prey. Like a big cat, he plays with her at first, messing with her head, until that ill-fitting suit comes off (a shirtless Dickinson dancing to George Michael’s ‘Father Figure’, an on-the-nose song choice that nevertheless works, made it seem as if the air-conditioning in the screening room had been turned off for a moment). This slow build-up, first teasing, then demanding, is masterfully realized by Reijn, giving the relationship ample time to believably develop; it is a welcome development after the establishing scenes of Romy’s work and domestic life are rushed through. The eclectic soundtrack has good needle drops in abundance, from INXS’ ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ to Robyn’s ‘Dancing On My Own’, which is again a bit obvious in the context of the scene (Romy taking Robyn’s role at a party) but somehow works completely. The musical pièce de resistance is a lengthy club scene reminiscent of the aforementioned Basic Instinct, set to a pounding techno track (it’s always techno). Summoned by Samuel, Romy submerges herself in an orgasmic sea of carnality trying to get to her object of desire.
Trust. That is a key word for actors in a project this strong and sexually charged. Nicole Kidman goes through the barrier and bares it all in the film, totally under Dickinson’s control. Their scenes are intimate and then some, and given the nature of the sex acts her performance is one of those that one calls ‘brave’. It takes some guts, and indeed trust, for an actress of Kidman’s age (she’s 57) and stature to take on a role like this, to be both an object of sexual desire (a triumph for the sexuality of older women) and of denigration. It is not Kidman’s absolute best performance, but it is definitely her most daring. Despite being surprisingly low on dramatics and histrionics, which a role like this could have easily devolved into, it is Romy’s confusion, frustration, and lusty fear that are rendered by Kidman with abandon. Opposite her the lanky, tall figure of Dickinson slips from young kid to dominant alpha male and back with ease. His predatory nature was already touched upon, and the actor’s sometimes taut and stern, sometimes boyish facial expressions emit a danger yet at times also confusion that makes his Samuel one of the more interesting characters in recent cinema. The biblical nameplay, not just with his name but also with Jacob’s, is part of the fun. But while both lead performances are brilliant in their own right, the dynamic between them, something that is so much needed for a story about power dynamics and sexual tension, is what elevates Babygirl to something far more nuanced than the simple examples mentioned before.
Reijn makes sure to write that dynamic into her self-penned screenplay, adding whimsy and frequent touches of humor to break the tension, but also ratcheting up when the suspense needs to be stretched like a rubber band. The repression of Romy’s life, both by what is expected of her as a mother and by her controlled and over-scheduled worklife, is given release in sometimes provocative, but sometimes surprisingly tender moments. This constant fluctuation between emotions keeps Babygirl fresh and the viewer on their toes, never truly knowing where the story is going. As mentioned, the introduction to Romy is too broad-stroke and cliched, and the film’s denouement, for all its feminist fist-pumping moments, a bit too tidy after such a messy story, but Reijn’s tale of lust, ambition, and morality is scintillating, funny, steamy, and just a damn good time at the theater. With slick production design, playful but focused direction, clever writing, and two central performances that create something bigger than the sum of its parts, Babygirl is an ambitious step up from Reijn’s English-language debut. Babygirl is a film that takes a concept often explored by male directors two to three decades ago, but brilliantly adapts it to the current zeitgeist, which means that younger audiences will take to this as well (it is easy to see why A24 picked this up). But probably not the best idea for a family night out.