Babygirl
One of the things I appreciate about Nicole Kidman as an actress is that she does not take straightforward projects when she is the lead. Hollywood tried to pigeonhole her throughout the ’90s after her breakout in “Days of Thunder,” but after “Eyes Wide Shut”- and her divorce from Tom Cruise- we started to see a lot more challenging work from her, and it’s been for a fun 25 years. In a way, Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl” has a kinship to Kubrick’s film in how it approaches erotic tension, and female desire, and I’ll admit- I’m still wrapping my head around it.
Here, Kidman- in a terrific performance- plays Romy, a CEO of a company who’s just released a new organizational helper. She is all about control, within her company, and with her sex life. When we first see her, she is having sex with her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), and- when done with that- she goes to another room to finish herself off. Her company is bringing on some new interns for a mentorship program, and one of the candidates is Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a young man who has saved her from a dog in broad daylight. At first, we begin to think he’s ingratiating himself into her life, and work, in a way that’s crossing the line, but as we begin to think about it more- as they get closer together- the more we see that not everything is as it seems.
“Babygirl” is a film that definitely requires some thought when we consider what we’ve just seen unfold over its 114 minutes. The more I’ve considered it since watching it, the more the pieces fall into place. Those opening scenes reveal what we most need to consider about Romy, how she is someone whose life relies on control and power. Initially, it feels like Samuel is disrupting that with how direct he is, but as the story goes along, he’s really adding a wrinkle into it that allows us to see another side of her controlling personality. Comparisons to “50 Shades of Grey” or “Unfaithful”- a movie I thought about in watching it- are facile and surface-level, but thinking in terms of Kidman’s career, “Eyes Wide Shut” is very much its strongest predecessor. That film’s narrative is thrust forward by Kidman’s character sharing a very specific fantasy regarding a naval officer her and Tom Cruise’s character saw on vacation one time. In terms of pure plot mechanics, she does this to make Cruise’s character jealous, and to show him how sexual women can be in their thinking, but it also shows her as someone for whom power and control matter. Romy has a similar moment here with Jacob (played wonderfully by Banderas, in smart supporting work), and it throws shade into everything that we’ve seen prior to the moment. Is it another power play on her part to stay in control of what’s been unfolding? Has Samuel been as in control as we think? Even as the film plays out, we’re left wondering either way, and it is a smart way of letting this film unfold on Reijn’s part.
The more I think about it, the more I think “Babygirl” resonates more than it did as I was watching it. This isn’t a conventional erotic drama, but that’s why it sits well as I’m thinking about it for this review. For that reason, like “Eyes Wide Shut,” it’ll bounce off audiences who expect one thing, but will find itself being rewarding to others.
