At a time when it’s easy to take everything literally, a film like Halina Reijn’s Babygirl can be dangerous when interpreted in the wrong hands. Namely, conservative male hands that might view Romy Mathis’ (Nicole Kidman) desire to be subjugated in the boudoir (or whatever seedy room she happens to be fucking in) as proof that “all women,” at their core, just want to be dominated.
However, as Samuel (Harris Dickinson), the twenty-something intern that Romy gravitates toward like a moth to a flame, assesses of such thinking, “That’s a dated idea of sexuality. I’m sorry, but you don’t understand” (this being the response to her husband’s assumption that he was the one being dominated in the sexual dynamic). So it is that the young millennial (if we’re going by Dickinson’s real age: twenty-eight) is tasked with schooling both Romy and her rather vanilla husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas, hardly embodying the “Latin lover” cliché here). Though, of course, Jacob doesn’t find out about the illicit affair until the third act. The discovery a predictable fait accompli. After all, the entire point of Romy engaging in such an inappropriate dalliance is for the sake of getting caught. It’s what Romy calls the kind of “high stakes” that can actually get her off. Because, before Samuel, as she (eventually) admits to Jacob, she never achieved an orgasm during her nineteen years of marriage. Needless to say, that’s a long goddamn time to rely solely on oneself for sexual satisfaction.
It is in this sense that Reijn highlights the greater, more nuanced pressures that a hetero woman is subject to in matters of sex. For it has long been deemed her “job” to please the man, in addition to acting like she herself is pleased—even when, more often than not, she isn’t—so as to evade the ultimate “sin”: damaging the fragile male ego. This is exactly the kind of “people-pleasing” that extends to all facets of a woman’s life, even one as powerful as a CEO like Romy. And this is what Reijn wants to reveal immediately in the first moan-filled scene she presents her viewers with. This idea that, for so many women, sex is a performative chore that involves more concern with how a man is responding, rather than being about any sense of pleasure for the woman. Thus, it, er, comes as no surprise that after feigning sexual ecstasy with her husband, Romy retreats into another room where she can masturbate to the type of porn that really gets her aroused: being dominated and told what to do.
In the days that follow, a new batch of interns start working at Romy’s company, which specializes in the creation of ever-more efficient warehouse robots using AI technology. That said, it’s Samuel who instantly gets her attention by asking a question that calls out the diabolical nature of the enterprise. Rather than being off-put—as she might be if this were a woman or un-hot male asking her the question—Romy is visibly charmed and titillated by this young man’s bravura. Just as she was when she first encountered him outside in the street of the NoMAD neighborhood (a.k.a. Madison Square North) near her office building (side note: A24 cut costs on the budget by providing their own office headquarters at 1245 Broadway as a primary filming location). That’s where she sees him manage to quell an out-of-control dog that’s barking and nearly biting at random strangers. It’s a sight that, clearly, arouses her to no end. And it’s one she approaches Samuel about when she finds herself near him in the kitchen area, inquiring about how he got the dog to calm down. He admits that he had cookies with him to do it. She ripostes, “Do you always have cookies on you?” He quips, “Why, do you want one?” This hint of suggestion on his part that she can be controlled and dominated in just the same way continues to get her sexual fantasy-related wheels turning.
This escalates when Samuel leaves behind a tie he took off while dancing at the company Christmas party. Clocking it the next morning, Romy picks it up and takes it with her, almost like a souvenir, finding herself—as though guided by an invisible hand—incapable of resisting the urge to stuff it in her mouth like a ball gag. Oh yes, she wants him, wants him real bad. And he feels the same, even if there are plenty of “little moments” in the movie that call attention to Kidman “looking like a mother” or her cosmetic procedures gone awry…at least as far as her oldest daughter, Isabel (nepo baby Esther McGregor), is concerned. And yes, it bears noting the Kidman’s increasingly catlike appearance is starting to rival Jocelyn Wildenstein’s (RIP). Which is part of the reason Reijn seems to incorporate Kidman’s real-life Botox obsession into the plot, with Samuel noticing the bruise from the needle lingering on her cheek while the two are in the elevator together and telling her she doesn’t need it.
He also has the gumption to inform her, “I think you like to be told what to do.” This said after he manages to finagle her as his “mentor” in the mentor program that Romy wasn’t aware her assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde), enrolled her in. (And yes, Esme will serve as the talking point for the competitive power dynamics between women in a corporate setting.) Just trying to make her more “accessible” to the “little people,” so to speak. But there’s nothing “little” about Samuel, certainly not in stature or personality. The same goes for Romy, a towering presence with her “obey everything I say” facial expressions and vocal modulations. Not to mention her “serving cunt” sartorial style (something Elisabeth Sparkle knows all about as well).
This is why there comes a moment in their various hotel room “exchanges” that Reijn opts for the diegetic sound of George Michael’s “Father Figure” playing as Samuel dances confidently to the rhythm (even if one doubts Dickinson had any knowledge of this song’s existence prior to Reijn opening his ears to it). And yet, both characters are one another’s “father figure,” if you will, with Samuel himself even showing occasional moments of vulnerability—like asking Romy to hold him—that place Romy in the “paternal” role, as it were. Accordingly, each bedfellow learns something valuable from the other. Particularly Romy. For, as Reijn breaks it down, “What happens when a woman starts to explore her sexuality and has to learn, for better or worse, what it takes for her to be able to ask for what she needs? Communication between humans is key. If you want a sex life that survives time, you’ve got to be able to ask for what you want.” Or, as Madonna once put it, “A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That’s why they don’t get what they want.”
And it’s especially challenging, even to this day, for women to speak their minds without fear. Fear of reprisal, fear of public opinion, fear of having her power taken away from her. But, by the end of Babygirl, Romy has transcended all previous fears that were holding her back. Keeping her from reaching her full potential in matters both pleasure and business-related. The best part about that being the fact that, unlike previous films of this nature, there isn’t some marked comeuppance for the woman who has the “audacity” to put her sexual needs first.
Although billed as an “erotic thriller,” there’s hardly any thriller elements to it (let’s just say this is no Basic Instinct or Disclosure), though it’s obvious Reijn is paying tribute to some of the quintessential classics in the genre (Secretary included). However, in contrast to an erotic thriller like Fatal Attraction, there is no “punishment” for cheating. Not in the same moralizing manner anyway. Instead, Reijn dares to posit that a woman’s husband (or long-term significant other) might actually be willing to meet her more than halfway, so long as she has the “balls” to communicate what she really wants and risk the initial uncomfortableness of “hurt feelings.”
But for those hoping Reijn might be “progressive” enough to turn this scenario into a PSA for polyamory, they’ll be expectedly disappointed. After all, the forbiddenness of affairs is part of what makes them so “hot” to people like Romy. A hotness that would cool if it was totally sanctioned.
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