Nicole Kidman plays Romy Mathis, a middle aged top female executive who seemingly has it all. Success, loving husband Jacob played by Antonio Banderas and good relationships with her two teenage daughters, Isabel played by Esther McGregor and Nora played by Vaughan Reilly. She is also a sexually repressed control freak who has every emotion under control. But something is missing in this high powered life.
The film opens with Romy in bed seemingly having hot sex with her loving husband Jacob. But as soon as the copulation finishes she’s off down the hallway to masturbate in front of porn on her laptop. Is she faking it? Or as the film unfolds maybe she is faking satisfaction throughout her whole life?
Always under stress and totally in control Romy is always trying to be the perfect CEO, the perfect woman. But when Samuel a young intern in her company, played by Harris Dickinson, comes along she is ready to risk everything she has worked for to play out an erotic fantasy of submission and dominance with him that becomes increasingly obsessive. It seems like underneath all the female dominance what really turns her on is submission to her male partner.
Reijn, who also wrote the script, explores female sexuality and male female power and dominance and Nicole Kidman is not shy of playing out the erotic scenes in the film with full intensity. It’s a fearless performance by Kidman, who portrays an array of complex and contradictory emotions skilfully.
In her director’s statement Reijn said: “Growing older means facing the endlessness of everything. During midlife, we can no longer hide, and must face our inner demons; the more we suppress our shadow, the more dangerous and disruptive our behaviour can become. The affair at the heart of Babygirl allows Romy and Samuel to play out their confusion around power, gender, age, hierarchy, and primal instinct. Despite its forbidden nature, the joy of that exploration is liberating, even healing.”
Antonio Banderas is a caring and supportive husband that would seem to be every liberated power woman’s dream. But in a stunning moment Romy throws it at him that she has never had an orgasm while having sex with him as the perfect marriage starts to fall apart. Meanwhile Romy has become so enslaved to her obsession that she ends up showing up at the bar where she knows Samuel works just to see him.
But this isn’t just a film about a still hot woman in her 50s who loses it over a young guy in his early 20s. This is also a film about the over controlled, tightly strung out technological society we now live in where every move is choreographed. It is about the inner desire of humans to break out of that control and create chaos.
Baby Girl (USA)
Directed by Halina Reijn
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde, Esther McGregor
