Babygirl: Discretion is the Better Part of Adultery
By Liz Braun
Rating: C
Nicole Kidman plays a woman in need of a really good therapist in Babygirl, the erotic drama from writer/director Halina Reijn that debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Much has been made of Kidman’s risk-taking performance here. The exact risk involved in having a camera right in your face while you pretend to have an orgasm is never specified, but okay.
Babygirl stars Kidman as Romy, a tightly-wound corporate executive with an apparently perfect life. She has a loving husband (Antonio Banderas, given nothing to do here), two terrific daughters, a great job and wonderful places to live — a fancy city apartment and a beautiful country house.
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in Babygirl
She’s uptight as hell, though, and the intimation is that her sex life is somehow lacking.
Inexplicably, she falls for a young intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), who has just started working at her company. She first sets eyes on Samuel outside the office, when he handily gains control of a large, runaway dog menacing people on the street. Romy stands frozen in fear, directly in the attacking dog’s path, just as Samuel reigns the animal in with a sharp whistle.
“Ooh … foreshadowing,” thinks every astute viewer familiar with bad writing.
Sure enough, Samuel proves to be a guy who can keep Romy on a very short leash. She is surprised to discover he works for her, and soon enough their immediate attraction to one another finds expression.
When she’s not surreptitiously shoving his tie into her mouth like a gag, she is getting down on all fours in a seedy hotel room at his command. Romy often covers her face during sex, suggesting that her desires are somehow shameful; the mild-mannered humiliation and degradation Samuel provides must be enjoyable for her.
Sadly, you won’t care. Neither Romy nor Samuel comes across as a particularly attractive person in any sense of the word — physically, mentally or emotionally. Or intellectually, psychologically, morally, philosophically, socially or, not to put too fine a point on this, any other way.
Their physical relationship seems highly unlikely in every element. It is weirdly mechanical and not remotely erotic, and worst of all, you never forget that you’re watching a movie. What are we missing here?
Babygirl appears to take a turn toward thriller turf when Samuel shows up unannounced at Romy’s country house, where she spends her weekends with her husband and daughters. There’s a moment when you wonder if the movie is going to veer into Fatal Attraction territory, but no such storytelling luck. Romy scolds Samuel for coming to the country house and says, “My family is everything to me, please don’t ever do that again.”
It’s been made obvious that risk and danger are an essential part of her kink, but apparently she draws the line somewhere … except that in what follows she appears ready to jettison her marriage, her children and her career. It’s stupid, it’s insulting and it’s infuriating.
When Romy tearfully confesses her indiscretions to her husband, he screams at her, “You jeopardized the most important thing - our children!” and it’s tough not to agree with him.
By the time he and Samuel engage in fisticuffs near the end of the film, you will note that Babygirl is just like any other dubious Hallmark Christmas movie, only with sex scenes.
Movies with famous actors engaged in simulated sex scenes always draw a lot of attention. But it’s a rare film that lives up to all the hoopla. This season, that rare film is Queer, with Daniel Craig. Glad you asked.
Babygirl: Written and directed by Halina Reijn, starring Nicole Kidman, Antonio Banderas, Harris Dickinson. In theatres December 25.