Babygirl: A Review - Cumming and Going
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Despite Nicole Kidman’s courageous and well-crafted performance, this movie never quite rises to the level of being captivating. Perverts of a more puritanical nature will probably want to see it for the titillation factor alone.
Babygirl, written and directed by Halina Reijn and starring Nicole Kidman, tells the story of Romy (Kidman), a highly-successful, middle-aged CEO who is deeply unsatisfied sexually in her marriage and ends up having a sadomasochistic affair with a much younger intern (Harris Dickinson) at her company.
The film was a moderate success when it hit the big screen on Christmas day of last year, and created quite a lot of buzz due to the sexual nature of its plot. I missed (or more accurately - skipped) Babygirl in theatres but it is now available to stream on Max, where I just watched it.
Let’s start with the positives, shall we. First off, Nicole Kidman gives a…dare I say it…”brave” performance as Romy, the woman who can’t orgasm with her husband and finds herself attracted to the dark call of the brooding young intern who masterfully plays power games with her.
Kidman embraces the middle-aged aspect of her character and the struggled to stave off father time, something that most actresses her age desperately engage in, but not so publicly and definitely not in their work. In this way this performance reminded me of Demi Moore’s performance in The Substance. Moore bravely bared all, and Kidman does too, and yet Kidman received no Oscar nod for her work, which upon watching Babygirl seems like a rather noticeable snub.
Kidman’s performance is fearless (even though her character is riddled with fear), and it needed to be. She unabashedly and very effectively cuts loose when needed and keeps things tightly wrapped the rest of the time.
Kidman is one of the biggest movie stars of her generation, and she’s one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood history, so seeing her be such a committed actress, and so unafraid of exposing herself and putting herself in vulnerable situations, is heartening, and speaks volumes about her artistic integrity.
Besides Kidman’s performance, there isn’t much to love about Babygirl. It bills itself as an erotic thriller, and while it definitely tries to be erotic it is curiously devoid of thrills.
In some ways the film is harkening back to the 1980’s and early 1990’s, which was the heyday of erotic thrillers. This callback is most effectively done through music, most notably with sequences featuring INXS’s “Need You Tonight” and George Michael’s “Father Figure”.
But the problem is that Babygirl isn’t Fatal Attraction, Body Heat or Basic Instinct, because while those films were erotic, they are also thrillers that had crimes at the heart of them. Babygirl is not a thriller because the only thing on the line in it is a reputation and a career, not a life.
What Babygirl really Is - is an examination of sex and power, or more accurately, power and sex, from the perspective of a female in a stereotypically male position of power – CEO.
This idea is an interesting one to examine, and there are threads of thought in the film deserving of much more attention, but the film ultimately has nothing truly interesting to say as it is incapable of profundity, and often at odds with its self philosophically.
Writer/director Halina Reijn, puts together some decent sequences, again the INXS and George Michael ones stand out, but she fails to fully flesh out the purpose and meaning behind the mania at the heart of her main character.
Besides Kidman, the cast are just ok. Harris Dickinson plays Samuel the intern, and he does well enough in the role I suppose, but I must admit that as a straight man I simply don’t get his appeal at all…and maybe that’s the point.
Antonio Banderas plays Jacob, Romy’s husband, and he gives a rather odd performance that seems to be slightly out of tune with the rest of the film.
The most bizarre thing about Babygirl is the dramatic conclusion it comes to (which I won’t share in order to avoid spoilers), which essentially finds that women in power misbehaving in the same ways that men in power misbehave, is somehow empowering.
It could be that the film’s final perspective, either intentionally or unintentionally, speaks to the intellectual and moral decay in modern feminism, where girl power is the ultimate goal even when it is delusional, deceptive, demeaning and devouring.
Ultimately Babygirl is, despite Nicole Kidman’s solid performance, a rather forgettable foray into the pool of erotic cinema. As previously stated, the films of the 80’s and 90’s seemed to have a better grasp on the genre, most notably because they leaned into the thriller part of erotic thriller.
Another issue plaguing the erotic thriller genre nowadays is the aggressive pornification of our culture. Porn is now mainstream to a shocking degree, and this is no more noticeable than in the music industry. Then there’s social media and the rest where people sell their bodies…and souls…for likes and attention. It is all so depressing.
Making an erotic film in our pornified culture is like trying to mix a drink while swimming in an ocean of alcohol…in other words, it feels like a fruitless endeavor.
The bottom line is that Babygirl explores some interesting topics, but refuses to dive deep, preferring to only dip its toes into dark and erotic waters. A better, and sexier, film about sex/power and S&M, is the 2002 movie Secretary, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. If you want to watch a well-made and well-acted erotic movie (that is also pretty intentionally funny), then watch Secretary, and leave Babygirl chained to its bed all by itself.
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