Babygirl (2024)

Whilst it strains everything to be transgressive, it just ends up as 50 shades of beige... - Babygirl review by TB

The story of the big boss of a company having an illicit affair with the intern is one which has been done many times before. When adding BDSM into the equation, the ground shifts towards the likes of Secretary, the film which catapulted Maggie Gyllenhaal into the spotlight & garnered rave reviews (I haven't seen that film but do intend to at some stage.) Babygirl attempts to tap into that, but reversing the roles completely, looking at female dominance and a woman CEO involved with a young male intern.

Romy Mathis (Kidman) is the CEO of a highly successful company. She is beautiful, wealthy & fiercely driven, with a "picture-perfect" family & life. But she is also deeply unsatisfied within herself, especially her sexuality. Whilst she has an active sex life with her husband, she gets nothing from this, climaxing by herself to porn afterwards. One day, a batch of new interns arrive for work experience, including Samuel (Dickinson,) who immediately makes moves on Romy & engages in a debauched affair with her. But the secret, as well as the mind games Samuel starts to play, threaten to unravel everything.

For a film which is obsessed with sexuality & deviance, one of the most striking things about Babygirl is how "safe" in many ways it is. There is very little nudity, and what little there is, the director shows only brief flashes. In a film which also repeatedly hammers home it's message of female dominance & equality, it is only Kidman who disrobes, with Dickinson conveniently wearing clothes or in bed sheets. And when you remember that Kidman was used to heart-breaking effect in another film exploring sexuality (Eyes Wide Shut,) Babygirl comes off like a damp squib.

But the biggest issue with this film is just how unbelievably boring it is for much of its running time, with inspired flourishes occasionally to attempt to keep your focus. Dickinson tries to underplay Samuel to make him both a cypher & a brooding heartthrob, but he just comes off extremely badly-written. Some of the motions the script forces him to go through, far from reinforcing this sexual dominance & lust, make him look ridiculous. There is one scene in a hotel room which tries to raise pulses before the sex starts, with him dancing whilst holding a glass of scotch, which caused the cinema audience I was in to collectively groan & laugh in awkwardness.

He also has a voice which is just a monotonous drone, like a vacuum cleaner on low setting. In no way did I buy the affair between him & Kidman, and the attempt at role-reversal as a gotcha moment just came off as desperate, no doubt looking better on the page than on screen.

However there are some good moments, like a nightclub scene which was the closest the film got to showing actual chemistry between the 2. Antonio Banderas, as Romy's husband, also makes a strong impression in the screen time he has. I also really liked Esther MacGregor (daughter of Ewan,) who manages to elevate the role of the clichéd lesbian daughter into something profound, especially later on in the film.

But despite the efforts of Kidman & the cast, I was actually quite glad when the credits rolled. Kidman is a totally fearless actress, who takes on genuinely provocative roles alongside the Hollywood movies she stars in. But the film seems to think that playing it safe is more erotic than fully letting rip, like Basic Instinct, a film the director has confirmed had an indelible influence on this movie. In the hands of a different director, such as Isabella Eklöf, Paul Verhoeven or Mary Harron, this could have been so much more.