The erotic thriller, according to some of the old guard, is dead—murdered by a completely sex-wary generation of prudes that has turned reasonable hesitations about consent and representation into an outright dismissal of the entire concept of getting freaky in the sheets. From both ends of the debate, the positions are obviously exaggerated; eroticism in cinema isn’t dead, nor has it survived solely as a testament to the brutality of a male-dominated industry living out its perverted fantasies at the expense of the dignity of the marginalized taking their clothes off.
Suffice it to say, the argument is a contentious one, and if an erotic thriller is to make any sort of noise in the 2020s (without succumbing to tabloid drama regarding which real-life celebrity relationships it’s fractured), it might be worthwhile to tackle that contentiousness head-on. If anyone seems to be in the most suitable position for such an undertaking, it’s probably Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn, whose debut “Instinct” caused a moderate uproar for its controversial treatment of sexual desire, and whose follow-up “Bodies Bodies Bodies” firmly placed her as a voice greatly fascinated by (if not perfectly attuned to) the most recent sex-ready generation. “Babygirl,” as a culmination of Reijn’s debates around desire, brings these ideas to a head with a sobering empathy.
Reijn’s conduit into the prickly world of consensual seduction is Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman), a New York businesswoman with everything she could ever want; the CEO of a thriving business, Mathis is a paragon of women’s success in a business world run by men, and her personal life is anchored by two loving daughters and a successful theater director husband (Antonio Banderas). As the holiday season approaches, Romy is fully aware that she has everything to be thankful for.
There’s just one problem: Reijn’s many achievements in “Babygirl” bring us to a point that viewers may never have even considered possible. Namely, Banderas has somehow become a completely safe and unexciting lover, and despite the love that binds their relationship, Romy’s long-hidden desire for a rougher sexual dynamic is given the space to flourish in spite of itself when a new intern at her corporation (Harris Dickinson) knows exactly what buttons to push to get her off.
Though a generational gap defines the dynamic between Romy and Samuel, the question of consent in the face of sadomasochistic sexual preferences isn’t entirely driven by what one generation considers acceptable and what another does not. At its core, “Babygirl” is a film about two people simply trying to figure out what they have—figuring out what they could deal with and how they can find the strength to face each other in the office after humping on a bathroom floor minutes earlier.
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Across the film, Romy is constantly wary of her relationship with Samuel and often rationalizes it with a statement that she’s only trying to protect the young man’s feelings. What would normally read as mere protection of oneself in the face of a potential firestorm of sexual harassment lawsuits instead comes across as at least partially genuine, because “Babygirl,” first and foremost, foregrounds the confusion and emotional precarity on both ends. Neither side is fully virtuous nor oblivious to the reality of what draws them together, but Reijn understands that a relationship of this sort is built upon pushing personal limits; when emotional limits must be pushed to meet physical euphoria, there’s no telling how cleanly things will break once the safeword is uttered.
It goes without saying that such a delicate balance—of tone, subject matter, of general takeaway—requires players willing to meet those limits, and Nicole Kidman’s performance proves her eternally game to explore these limits of control with a fragile verve. From the first shot of the film, Reijn places the focus squarely on Kidman’s face, as the threshold of pleasure becomes a vortex through which one woman’s frustrated lack of satisfaction rubs up against the abasement of that frustration.
From Kidman’s brittle gaze and the way she shrinks into herself upon Samuel’s commands, we see that the greatest humiliation Romy feels isn’t the sort that gets her excited, nor the fact that she even requires such means to do so; Romy’s greatest humiliation is her understanding that her sexual needs will never be met unless she gives up some sense of loyalty (internally or not) to those she truly loves.
Dickinson and, in the last stretch of the film, Banderas both meet this moment as well as the poles that tighten Romy’s sexual frustration, and it’s Reijn’s framing of her journey that brings this strain to the fore. (Banderas playing a director, who should ostensibly be a great force of command but cannot fulfill his wife’s sexual desire to be dominated, is a solid touch.) Eternally drenched in shallow focus, “Babygirl” is expertly composed by Jasper Wolf’s camera, almost always leaving some semblance of Romy’s pleasure just offscreen; combined with Matthew Hannam’s editing, which seems to always cut interactions short just before they reach their own climax, Reijn’s vision is one fully steeped in the withdrawal of satisfaction that lies behind the veneer of its subjects’ (read: both of them) cold blue eyes.
If the erotic thriller truly is dead, it may only be so in the form that evolves the stain of an orgasm into a pool of blood. “Babygirl” never goes so far as to become a vision of horrific violence, but Halina Reijn’s view of a woman’s satisfaction is no less distressed in the internal struggle to claim one’s sexual autonomy from the most judgmental party: the one staring them in the mirror. An unflinching film about being demeaned that never demeans itself or its protagonist, “Babygirl” finds more erotic thrills in a conflicted mind than at the tip of a riding crop.
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