Nicole Kidman, which is already the most talked about film in this year’s Competition, plays a woman willing to risk everything for a torrid romance that finally allows her deepest desires to emerge.
Romy (Nicole Kidman) has it all. She is a successful and admired CEO with a loving husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), and two teenage daughters (Esther McGregor and Vaughan Reilly).
However, the fact that run a company specializing in robotics And the fact that her husband is a theater director should tell us that he knows a thing or two about living life in automated mode and that he excels at nailing a performance when he needs to. As we find out in the first scenes of ‘Babygirl’, your sex life is very routine and you need to go to your laptop for a domination role play once she has had a seemingly intense orgasm with her husband.
Start a romance with the rooster Samuel (Harris Dickinson), one of his new interns the one she had previously seen on the street taming a dog that was about to attack her. She feels immediately attracted by his assertiveness, his contempt because of office niceties and his general disobedient attitude. As your relationship with BDSM overtones develops, so do threat levels.
Will Romy finally be able to explore the sexual terrain that she had until now denied herself, leading her towards sexual plenitude? Or is she being used by a rather predatory man who could torpedo everything she has built in the blink of an eye?
As Samuel nonchalantly says: “I could make one call and you could lose everything“.
But that might be the most exciting thing of all… And she seems to realize it. When Jacob asks her at the beginning if he is relevant to her as a director, she responds: “We are all irrelevant, we have to pay more attention to the avalanche that is going to cover us very soon.”
An avalanche is coming
Labeling ‘Babygirl’ as a transgressive erotic drama could be doing it a disservice. Although it is sometimes vaporous, it is more a coming-of-age story about self-discovery and focusing on a woman’s vulnerability, shame, and rageand how it faces a skewed power dynamic.
Dutch director Halina Reijn, who previously directed ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ as well as ‘Instinct’, centered on a psychosexual relationship between a sex offender and his therapist, proves once again that she can delve into illicit desires and power dynamics genre with brio. Here she shines not only because of the way she explores how “shameful” desires need their space -and how its suppression can be as potentially dangerous as a torrid affair-, but also for its lack of moral judgment. Reijn’s film embraces the often contradictory forces that make people who they are, and never judges its characters.
There are no good or bad binaries here; only complex people with voracious desires which add up to the central question: Who is in control?
Kidman excels at embodying this, and is mesmerizing throughout. He imbues Romy with a quiet vulnerability and conveys her inner conflicts despite trying to keep up appearances. Banderas, for her part, gives a discreet performance, on par with hers, but with much less time on screen.
A film that lacks a punch of effect
However, what prevents ‘Babygirl’ from being a true hit are the superior cinematographic referencessince it is difficult (with the pipe in the background) not to think of ‘The Piano Teacher’, ‘Elle’ or ‘Eyes Wide Shut’. They all feel relevant since then (in order): Isabelle Huppert is this year’s jury president and starred in Michael Haneke’s erotic psychological drama; She also starred in the 2016 psychosexual thriller by Paul Verhoeven, a director for whom Reijn acted in ‘Black Book’ in 2006; and Kidman was at the Lido 25 years ago with the late director’s last – and controversial – film. It is true that they are all led by men, but feature complex female characters and explore layered female desire in a way that makes genders behind the camera irrelevant.
‘Reijn’s’ take on the ’80s erotic thriller remains a bold update, and never limits itself to post-#MeToo morality. It is a brave film, considering its candor and its cast, since the film strikes at the heart of American puritanism and puts into perspective certain films that consider themselves revolutionary, highlighting once again that some of their supposedly taboo predecessors (‘9 and a Half Weeks’, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’) are actually tame in the extreme, and in the case of the latter, deeply insulting. However, the aforementioned films by Haneke, Verhoeven and Kubrick seemed more challenging in exploring complicated and impermissible longings in a sanctimonious way.
Although ‘Babygirl’ is a Admirably sex-positive dramal, tends to limit itself: Honest and open communication regarding desire is vital. As crucial as this message is, the film may not be the electrifying, or thought-provoking, jolt you might expect.
‘Babygirl’ premiered at the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival in competition.
