Movie Review ~ Babygirl

The tricky intersection of power, desire, and female sexuality has long been explored in cinema, even before it had to be played as a deeply hidden subtext.  Aggressively male perspective films have dominated the narrative, and there’s room to say racy entertainment like Basic Instinct, Disclosure, or heck, even Showgirls opened the door for more daring explorations of women exerting their strength through sex, albeit casting them as pseudo-villains along the way.  This leads us to A24’s Babygirl, a provocative examination of corporate power dynamics and personal liberation courtesy of audacious filmmaker Halina Reijn.

Written and directed by the Dutch actress-turned-director who made quite the splash with the slinky and clever 2022 hit Bodies Bodies Bodies, Reijn’s newest project sizzles with intelligence and tension, refusing to shy away from its thorny subject matter.  Embracing its complexity with a mix of boldness and restraint (and one helluva great performance from star Nicole Kidman), Babygirl arrives at a time when women’s rights are being threatened, questioned, and back-burner-ed in favor of a male agenda.  Step inside Reijn’s sharp, unflinching world, though, and you’ll find a fire that can’t be put out.

Demonstrating from the first frame that she remains a force of nature in modern cinema, Kidman (Faraway Downs) commands the screen as Romy Mathis, a tech CEO whose carefully curated life masks deep personal fissures. Her marriage to theater director Jacob (Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory) has cooled to obligatory intimacy, while her professional world offers control but little satisfaction. When her young intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson, The Iron Claw) makes an cheeky proposition during a private meeting, it ignites a chain reaction that sends Romy down forbidden and transformative paths. A subsequent affair evolves into a brazen display of dominance and submission, threatening both Romy’s marriage and her meticulously constructed world.

Kidman, who claimed the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for this role, is always up to something interesting but hasn’t been this electrifying in years. She peels back Romy’s corporate armor to reveal layers of longing, guilt, and defiance while maintaining an underlying steel that reminds us this woman hasn’t reached the C-suite by accident. A young talent growing increasingly formidable in his own right, Dickinson matches her beat for beat, making Samuel simultaneously predatory and wounded – a figure whose motivations remain tantalizingly unclear. Seeing Banderas in this role is interesting because I could have seen him play Dickinson’s had a similar film been made two decades earlier.  Here, he brings a refined dignity to Jacob, particularly in the film’s latter half, where raw truths are exchanged like grenades between husband and wife.

Yet the thrill of watching Babygirl isn’t in the titillation of its torrid encounters but in Reijn’s impossible-to-resist invitation to wrestle with our own reflective questions of desire, morality, and agency.   Through her precise direction, she examines sexuality through a distinctly female lens, never exploiting its subjects while remaining unflinching in its depiction of the quid pro quo always present within power dynamics. These intimate scenes are crafted with an examining gaze that turns on the mind before the body, positioning the film as a sophisticated commentary on consent and control in our post-#MeToo landscape.  Space is even given for Romy’s observant assistant (Talk to Me‘s Sophie Wilde) to provide rebuttal from a different female perspective, demonstrating that though the glass ceiling may extend higher than ever for women, falls from grace remain never straightforward to resolve. 

Of course, sleek and seductive subject matter must be surrounded by the right technical elements. Reijn further amplifies Babygirl by assembling stimulating visuals, working with cinematographer Jasper Wolf, and perfectly timed needle drops to complete the ambiance.  Kurt and Bart’s sumptuous costume design envelops characters in buttoned-up couture that gradually unravels alongside their composure.  Production designer Stephen Carter contrasts Romy’s sterile corporate office and crisp home aesthetics with soft suites for her trysts with Samuel.  The pulsating score from Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s thrums with tension, sexual and otherwise, while inspired music choices punctuate key moments – George Michael’s Father Figure takes on new meaning in this context, and Sky Ferreira’s original song Leash provides a heart-racing, darkly fitting coda.

Rooted as a bold exploration of yearning to break free of personal limitations and the beauty found in liberation, Babygirl refuses easy moral judgments. It’s sexy without being exploitative, dangerous without melodrama, and esoteric without becoming impenetrable. At a time where discussions of power and consent dominate cultural conversation, Reijn has crafted a grown-up film that trusts its audience to handle difficult questions without obvious answers.  (At the TIFF premiere screening I attended, the worldly director seemed delighted to engage with the open-ended questions the film raises.) With Kidman’s powerhouse performance guaranteed to ignite awards season conversations, this is a provocative rendezvous that sophisticated adult audiences won’t want to miss.