The Push and the Pull: Babygirl Review

There’s an ongoing crisis in film: the death of the sex scene. Whether it’s from a lack of demand or a puritanical streak sweeping society, cinema’s dry spell has lasted years. But after a long drought, Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies) brings sex back on screen in a big way with her erotic thriller Babygirl. 

In Reijn’s script, Nicole Kidman, waifish and composed as ever, is Romy, a triple-threat CEO-wife-mother living the modern bourgeois dream. She wears stilettos and coiffed hair while wielding an iron hold over her robotics company, keeps not one but two beautiful residences in New York with her devoted husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas)—a playwright successful in his own right; one can picture the dinner parties these two host—and still finds time to leave handwritten notes in her kids’ lunch sacks. But after she meets intriguing intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson), the fault lines in her life start to show, from her need for control to her loving but sexually unfulfilling marriage.

Erotic thrillers need a taboo and chemistry to succeed, and Babygirl has both in spades. Reijn sets up the perfect forbidden affair between Romy and Samuel in post-MeToo corporate America, where everyone is hyper-aware of power dynamics and appropriate behavior. In the office, the corporate hierarchy draws clear boundaries—and that’s not even considering the solid 30-year age difference separating Romy and Samuel. But the lines get blurred as the two characters orbit each other. Samuel asks impertinent questions and finagles his way into having Romy as a mentor; Romy masturbates to the thought of him while in her office after hours. In the first test of their shifting power dynamic, Samuel orders a glass of milk to Romy’s table at a work happy hour and watches from across the room to make sure she gulps the whole thing down.

Reijn knows the importance of foreplay, building tension so masterfully that by the time Samuel and Romy actually hook up, it’s a release for the whole audience. And the energy between the two leads is undeniable. Kidman, as always, conveys her character's thoughts with every flick of her eyes and minute change in expression, while Dickinson’s candidness and unpredictability make the perfect foil to her restraint. Because we’re firmly planted in Romy’s shoes throughout the movie, Samuel is necessarily a less filled out character. But Dickinson is a force onscreen, bringing equal weight to Samuel’s sensitive side and his temperamentality. 

The sexual tension in the movie is like a live wire thanks to Reijn’s careful plot escalations and Kidman and Dickinson’s chemistry. But for each step forward in Romy’s affair with Dickinson, she tries to pull back two. She’s a study in self-loathing shame about her own desires, which she masks as concern about the power difference between her and Samuel. Samuel sees this for what it really is: hesitation to surrender control. That give and take adds an emotional element to their sexual affair. With Samuel, Romy can’t hide behind a mask; he makes her say out loud what she wants before giving it to her, quite literally explaining consent to her as he coaches her toward accepting her impulses. And as Samuel and Romy open up to each other, the sex scenes between the two evolve from hurried hookups in the office bathroom to full days exploring each others’ bodies.

This twist in power dynamics is where Reijn strikes gold. With it, Babygirl unfolds as both a reflection on submission and domination and a layered look at one woman’s attempt to become more comfortable with vulnerability and her own needs. At the same time, the undercurrent of tension keeps you on edge as Romy’s web of lies starts unraveling.

By balancing out the eroticism and thrills with a meaningful character study, Babygirl becomes more than its genre. Goodbye cinematic dry spell: sex is back now.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider becoming a patron of Hyperreal Film Journal for as low as $3 a month!