Head of Reviews Robert Flynn unfurls the many points of tension and desire that are rich in Babygirl, Halina Reijn’s thrilling and seductive new drama
Erotic cinema feels as though it is a symbol of a bygone era of salacious thrillers. Writer and director of Babygirl (2024) Halina Reijn might just feel the same way, yet she possesses an affinity for the subgenre. By casting recognisable stars like Nicole Kidman and Antonio Banderas, Reijn aligns her new suspenseful and sexy drama with films like Femme Fatale (2002) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999); nonetheless, Babygirl is much more Kubrick than it is De Palma. Her follow up to her highly quotable and enjoyable Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) presents a female centered and personal revision of the usual erotic thrillers. Her latest film is propulsive, engaging, and utterly seductive.
Reijn focuses her tale of power and sexual fulfillment on Romy (Nicole Kidman), an influential CEO as well as a mother of two. Her company works in automating warehouses, eliminating any margin of error through the implementation of AI and robots. In her work, everything must operate like a well-oiled machine. At home, her husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) is effusive about her work ethic and certainly enthusiastic about their sexual relationship. Everything falls into place for Romy, and that might just be the reason that she feels so desperately unfulfilled.
Her quotidian routine is uprooted by the arrival of a young new intern at her company, the eager-eyed and coolly confident Samuel (Harris Dickinson). In lingering wide shots, Heijn depicts Romy’s growing fascination with Samuel as she picks him out of crowds to observe his interactions with other people. Samuel treats Romy far less attentively than anyone else, he doesn't cater to her every need. Samuel teases Romy repeatedly until she succumbs to his advances, initiating an affair where they are free to explore and exchange sexual power dynamics.
Reijn’s main concern is addressing how all of these opposed values can coexist: non-mongamy and motherhood, influence and submission, sexuality and business. Romy projects an image of power and order, both as a CEO and as a mother, but her sexual desires come in conflict with this constructed representation. To go against what is expected of her, to explore things that lay outside the bounds of conformity and monogamy is exactly what interests Romy. The question is if everyone else can hold two images of Romy at the same time. Reijn goes further in her exploration of contradictory wants and desires, ultimately arriving at her most intriguing point: can an erotically, consensually masochistic, focused relationship also be a source of emotional support that can sustain and nurture someone?
Each of these provocations and investigations are handled expertly by Reijn, who is proving to be an especially exciting and invigorating contemporary auteur. Scenes are made hypnotically seductive by how heightened and focused the sound design is on the nervous shifts and actions of each of the characters. When everything comes to a halt, everything is suddenly steeped in a suspenseful silence. Highlighting how Romy and Samuel’s desires manifest physically in their behaviours is something that Reijn is able to replicate in her visual language. Shots tend to play out longer than expected in Babygirl which allows the audience to witness Romy and Samuel’s wants and needs breaking through their consciously constructed facades.
While Babygirl concerns itself predominantly with the expectations that Romy faces as well as how she can find sexual fulfillment amongst her challenges, it is an incredibly sympathetic portrait of her journey. Reijn’s script and direction are replete with emotional sensitivity for every character and how their needs must also be met. In a film that uses a lot of characters as symbolic representations, every performance is able to break free from any perceived limitations, namely Banderas who sits comfortably in the background until asserting his gravitas that launches him into the foreground of the narrative.
Babygirl proves to be an sexy and lustful presentation of the complexity of balancing contradictory values that often aren't allowed to be seen as being able to work in tandem with one another. Reijn’s exploration of sexual fulfillment is fastidiously crafted as she weaves in characters and values into a seductively hypnotic tale of sexual fantasies and imposed limitations: both unwanted and desired.