The problem with Babygirl
Stop calling it an erotic thriller. Plus, Matt and Mara.
In the opening moments of Babygirl, Nicole Kidman’s character slips out of bed after having sex with her husband. She sprints down the hall to final destination, her enviable walk-in closet1, large enough to hold her prone body as she furiously masturbates to some good-girl-for-daddy porn on her laptop. Nothing that follows in the film—a tale of middle-aged self-discovery and a middling marriage drama parading as an erotic thriller—manages to be as stimulating or provocative. Halina Reijn’s third feature is dangerously light on eroticism and absent of any bodily suspense.
Romy, a tech company CEO, the mother of two beautiful girls, and wife of a successful theater director (Antonio Banderas, simultaneously out of place and in-on-the joke, whatever that is), finds herself in personal crisis over the appropriateness of her sexual desires, eventually submitting to an affair with her confrontational intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson). Unlike everyone who bows at her feet in reverence, he directly challenges her authority from the start. Dickinson’s pointedly attentive ogling reduces her to a helpless little girl (like it would anyone), gradually compelling her into the sub-dom relationship she has always secretly yearned for. Their hierarchical workplace imbalance introduces another spark of tension—she could lose it all as her boss—that quickly fizzles out. An Adrian Lyne movie this is not.
Like Bodies Bodies Bodies, Reijn’s previous feature, Babygirl engages us in a guessing game of tone, a conflicted charge of potential menace and goofy humor. Hoping to emulat ethe puckishness of Paul Verhoeven, she lands on something more fragmented and bland (kind of like internet culture). Her films seem to traffic in characters, women specifically, who want to do bad things and feel bad thoughts, but are rendered emotionally incontinent, stuck in their heads with sputtering thoughts. As Romy and Samuel negotiate their relationship, they never really clarify anything, missing a chance to engage with ideas of power, sex, shame—which are only brought up when useful. There’s a very-late conversation starter in the film on differing generational views of masculinity jammed in there like a non-sequitur.
In interviews Reijn has alluded to her own personal experiences and conservative upbringing, yet none of these ideas fully materialize in the film. Not that they have to entirely. But just because Romy flounders and doubts herself doesn’t give the film an excuse to fumble aimlessly, too. Doing lovely work, Kidman—vulnerable, fearless—mostly fills in the gaps.
The recurring kink materializes as a game of cat-and-pet-owner, in which Romy is ordered to drink milk, first at work happy-hour and later lapped up in a mock seedy hotel room. Milk, a symbol of innocence and purity, emerges as a contrived fetish, a gag that feels more engineered for the film—or perhaps TikTok—rather than genuine expression.2 I felt the same when George Michael’s “Father Figure” started playing in the background. A little too on the nose, and not even with a sense of bombastic affection a la Luca Guadagnino.
More details feel implausible, particularly as it concerns Romy as a business woman. I find it hard to believe someone so high up wouldn't know she had a meeting with an intern, who in turn probably would not have access to her calenda (but you’d also be surprised at the number of HR/People team members who don’t know how to hide their gcal…..) One could argue these inconsistencies suggest the film is best read as fantasy. Lacking in specifics, Dickinson’s slippery intern, conjured out of thin air almost, is a carnal manic pixie dream boy after all.
I can warm to Babygirl ever so slightly only when I put myself in the Louboutin’s of some elegant mother with perfect life stewing over her misguidedly evil horny thoughts. There there. The movie might just be what a conservative boss-bitch needs to save her marriage, and herself. ❥ℰ
Related (and better) viewing
All streaming, and you can find out exactly where here.
Another movie about discovering who you are in the world and kinks can be found in Joanna Arnow’s film from last year, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed.
For a more nuanced depiction of a woman flirting with destroying her life vis-a-vis a younger man, there is Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer.
Some more from the canon:
Belle Du Jour (Luis Bunuel 1967), a classic
Woman in Chains (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1969), a deeper cut
The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke, 2002), a personal favorite
Secretary (Steven Shainberg, 2002), the one you know but maybe still haven’t seen
Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell, 2006), funny and full of mirth
MATT AND MARA
Kazik Radwanski
Now an altogether different affair, one of the heart. I saw these two films around the same time last fall, and was struck by how they both deal with expressions of uncertainty and women in undeclared crisis. In this film, the characters hold everything in by design.
A figure from the past re-enters your life and draws you into your orbit. What would you do next?
Mara (Deragh Campell, always always excellent) is a university lecturer in Toronto who hasn’t published in a while. Matt (Matt Johnson) is the more established author and literary edgelord roaming NYC. She has a husband and child. He’s single. The details of their shared history, beyond forging a freshman year bond, are never disclosed but their interactions carry the distinct whiff of flirtation and romantic past. When Matt sneaks into Mara’s poetic grammar class in the beginning of the film, neither of them can keep a straight face. Giggly and euphoric, they pick up right where they left off in undergrad, bopping around town invisibly smitten while Mara runs errands like renewing her passport. Naturalistic camera movements draw us closer still to their intimacy, even as the boundaries of their relationship remain unclear. They’re close—but in what way exactly? When they’re mistaken as a couple, neither offers a correction.
Mara happens to be working on a novel about someone who doesn’t realize their desires until they’re slapped by them in the face, which neatly summarizes her predicament, hovering on the precipice of infidelity without quite coming to full terms with it. The will-they-or-won't they scenario between them unfolds in a manner so understated that if you’ve never been in this particular situation or operated on this wavelengths you might miss it entirely—or just come away thoroughly annoyed. Radwanski’s film captures the hidden frisson of an emotional affair, sublimating each character’s tentative feelings into realistically nebulous actions.
Louche and amicably competitive, Matt not only complements Mara’s more quietly intuitive and reserved personality, but augments it—at least that’s how Mara feels. They’re better when they’re together. She isn’t sure who she is without him in this new stage of life-in-your-30s. The movie challenges us to consider how we define ourselves in different…eras, if you will, asking us whether we are really right about who we were in the first place. Now available to rent.
Maybe it was just a regular old office/study. I saw this months ago so i don’t remember, forgive me!
So we’re clear, no shade to any milk-related fantasies. It is just that the movie makes it seem so fake.
The Piano Teacher comparison is so apt and your note about the milk scene being built for TikTok made me so sad. We are starved for depth.
The way I could feel the lightbulb going off in my brain on the line about the milk of it all feeling engineered for TIKTOK... once you see it it's so obvious. Another excellent review