Unlike its protagonist, Babygirl is too easily satisfied. Nicole Kidman plays Romy, the commanding CEO of a pioneering robotics company. Romy’s life appears to be perfect—we get a montage of the health-and-beauty routine that props up this facade—but we know from the opening sex scene with her husband (Antonio Banderas), as well as from the strained conversations with her teen children, that something inside her is amiss. When a strapping young intern (Harris Dickinson) crosses her path, she indulges in a submissive-dominant affair in an attempt to fix it. Written and directed by Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies), Babygirl seems happy to sit in the obvious irony of an A-list “girlboss” wanting to be sexually dominated by a younger professional underling. And so the movie devotes most of its running time to their graphic dalliances (Kidman is not going gently into the later stages of her career) without offering any other ideas about corporate feminism or power as it relates to gender and age. It might have been especially interesting to unpack Romy’s marriage, exploring what sexual incompatibility might mean for such a union, but Babygirl mostly uses the Banderas character as a foil. (In many ways this is Eyes Wide Shut lite.) Still, Kidman’s commitment and interiority gives this both ferocity and a beating heart, while Dickinson—so good as a sexually conflicted teenager in 2017’s Beach Rats—delicately dances on the line between tragedy and trash (and just plain dances, in one hypnotic moment, to the tune of George Michael’s “Father Figure”). His Samuel is a loose cannon—I like how he laughs at inappropriate moments—but even when he’s bossing Romy around, we can sense, in the occasional downturned smile, that he’s operating from his own place of hurt. Kidman is the oft-bared star here, but Dickinson is the one to watch.
(12/31/2024)
