BABYGIRL: Who’s Your Daddy?

“Do I have value to you–– as a director?” theater director Jacob (Antonio Banderas) asks Romy (Nicole Kidman), his high-powered tech CEO wife, in a rare moment of alone time. In Babygirl, Halina Reijn’s deliriously overheated romp of an erotic thriller (her follow up to Bodies Bodies Bodies), this question is an essential one. An overt throwback to the kinds of films that kept Michael Douglas in expensive hair grease throughout the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, it’s a blend of familiar plotlines–– the sexualized office power dynamics of Disclosure or Fatal Attraction, the kinkiness of Basic Instinct or Indecent Proposal, all of which showcase a powerful woman getting sexually cut down to size. Here, though, a female CEO’s S&M dalliance with her twentysomething intern (Harris Dickinson) takes on the less choreographed, more uncomfortable, and ultimately redemptive cast of Stephen Shainberg’s beloved oddball dom-com, Secretary, about self-actualization via spanking; in this sense, Babygirl is a middle-aged coming-of-age story for its embattled protagonist. With Kidman pouring the full force of her personality into the film’s pulpy, highwire drama, the end result is an unexpectedly funny stress-machine full of sex, lies, and office (melo)drama. It may not be as substantial a story as it aims to be–– at its core it’s a gussied up version of one of Kidman’s recent TV thrillers, more 50 Shades of Grey than Eyes Wide Shut, Christmas setting or no–– but it’s a confident, lively vehicle for its star and, like a really good paperback, thoroughly engrossing. Its depictions of kink, while surface-level (the film is, I think, sexier in the abstract than in practice), can ultimately be read as an intricate and compelling portrait of powerplay as direction. 

How to Be a Human Expert

From the film’s outset, all is not well in Romy’s ultramodern, ultra-composed household. We begin with what appears to be a steamy sexual encounter between Romy, a tech CEO who aims to fully automate fulfillment centers with AI robots, and her husband, Jacob. After a long, sweaty closeup on Kidman during sex, followed by some intimate caresses and sweet nothings, she leaves the bedroom to watch dom-sub internet porn alone. Evidently, what seemed like mutual satisfaction was more akin to the performance of one of her fulfillment machines at work, a task-oriented role she describes as creating “manufactured accountability,” there to the company, here to her loving but sexually uninspiring husband. She pointedly wears a frilly apron at home while she makes breakfast, hoping to conjure an air of girlish subservience and he only tells her she looks “weird.” She describes herself in her CEO role as a “human expert,” but these opening passages suggest this expertise is used as a tool of manipulation, control, and abatement rather than an aid to the kind of genuine interpersonal harmony only frank communication can bring. After a dog almost attacks her on the street, only to be called off by Samuel, a thin young man with a wry smile who insinuates himself into being her mentee at work, she finds her carefully choreographed facsimile of intimacy shattered. The film’s presentation of Romy’s mysterious young paramore-to-be is more archetypal than realistic–– he has no deep backstory, and neither his entry into the internship program nor his keen, seemingly tactical interest in her specifically is never explained, building intrigue that invites the kinds of speculation more common to corporate thrillers. Full of self-consciously ‘70s zooms and corporate ‘80s anonymizing urban architecture, the film is confident in its play with these familiar generic conventions, modulating tension with a wonderfully propulsive, groaning score by Cristobal Tapia de Veer (The White Lotus, Smile).

source: A24

The affair between Romy and Samuel builds inevitably in a tightly paced first act full of boilerplate scenes of strained, faux marital bliss, progressively graver quotidian deceptions, and advances by Samuel that attain an almost Yorgos Lanthimos cringe quality, anonymously ordering Romy a glass of milk at a bar for example. “I have to work late,” is a common refrain from Romy. It’s admittedly refreshing to watch this kind of stock plot played out with the gendered roles reversed (Kidman, like Demi Moore, is breaking boundaries this year with this juicy, sexual role for a woman over 50, and giving Michael Douglas a run for his money), and with such a blithe dedication to the more mundane side of S&M powerplay. 

Films of this nature live and die on the chemistry between their leads. Kidman is electric, radiating a nuanced blend of inchoate, jittery sexual need and steely ambition. Dickinson’s performance is compelling as well, coming off as opaquely juvenile, like what Tom Cruise’s character in Risky Business might like after graduating from Princeton. He mumbles his way through his flirtations and twists his mouth into the kind of sly, adolescent grin that suggests he might have left a thumbtack on Romy’s chair. He is, at the same time, arguably unconvincing as a dom, subduing the seemingly indomitable Kidman with the petulance of a teenager: “Stop,” he complains in a pouty, boyish tone, “I don’t like it like that.” At the screening I attended, some of his more overtly “dominant” lines and beats were met with laughter that may or may not have been the filmmaker’s intention (“Sometimes I scare myself,” he whispers, adorably). Banderas, meanwhile, is equally hard to believe as a man incapable of sexual power play–– he’s undeniably sultry, magnetic in this film, and the premise alone recalls his role in any number of Almodóvar’s sexually thorny, far-kinkier-than-this dramas (¡Átame! for example) or his famously sexy performances in blockbusters like Desperado.

source: A24

This reversal is, perhaps, part of the film’s take on S&M, with the two leads, like the odd couple of Secretary, compelled by each other precisely because their outward types are so counterintuitive for the roles they yearn to play. On this score, Samuel clearly understands the character Romy was born to play in bed and directs her with aplomb while the more open, intuitively creative Jacob is closed to this kind of sexual theater, leaving sex’s inherent give-and-take dynamics untapped for drama. At the same time, though, this tension between the two men’s on-screen energies and their characters’ can be distracting. Still, Kidman and Dickinson’s scenes together are deeply entertaining, relishing the petty awkwardnesses of getting to know a new sexual partner’s specific needs. 

Conclusion

Babygirl is full of surprises, bringing the often painfully uncomfortable, straining sexual doublecrossing of last year’s May December to mind, refracted like that film through the visual and narrative languages of out-and-out melodrama. Unlike that film’s agonizingly ambiguous play with power and control, though, its attempts at deeper commentary about women in positions of power–– drawn through comparisons to Hedda Gabler, a series of corporate videos, and a plotline involving an ambitious underling, Talk to Me’s fabulous Sophie Wilde, who wants to empower women in tech–– remain largely one dimensional. Like the sweets Samuel keeps in his pockets to bring dogs and CEOs alike to heel, then, Babygirl is a sugar rush of a film–– a sweet but insubstantial treat. 

Babygirl will be released in theaters in the US on December 25th.