December 23, 2024
FILM: BABYGIRL
DIRECTED BY: HALINA REIJN
STARRING: NICOLE KIDMAN, HARRIS DICKINSON, ANTONIO BANDERAS
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
Nicole Kidman has been on quite a journey as an actress in the last couple of decades. Not only has she amassed a bunch of Oscar nominations and one win for her film roles, but she has also conquered television, including an Emmy win for Big Little Lies. So, coming in to her latest film project, Babygirl, there’s anticipation: Will she do something totally different or continue on the same familiar path? In this case, it’s more the latter because the film and her character feel like extensions of the worlds she’s been circling in lately, including recent TV projects such as The Perfect Couple and The Undoing. She’s playing complicated, beautiful, and multi-layered women. However, it’s starting to feel a bit like she’s been there and done that now more than a few times.
In Babygirl, she plays Romy Mathis, a high-powered CEO of a corporation that specializes in automation. However, her biggest obsession at the moment is on her sex life. We learn very quickly that she has an unsatisfying relationship with her husband Jacob, played by Antonio Banderas. When the new interns arrive at her office, she becomes immediately attracted to Samuel, played by twenty-something year old Harris Dickinson. She can’t take her eyes off him and he can’t take his off her. They begin a torrid affair in which their roles as mentor/protégée become reversed: He thinks she wants him to tell her what to do and thus the connection gets extra steamy.
There are so many directions this idea could go. After all, the film was produced in the era in which MeToo and sexual politics have been on the forefront of the news, public discourse, and our entire world of entertainment. So, it’s a little surprising how much writer/director Halina Reijn leans into the affair. We’ve seen many such stories but it’s not clear what new she is attempting to accomplish here. On the one hand, there is the sexually frustrated older woman who needs a younger man to feel something she might not have ever been able to feel before. I preferred the 2022 film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, in its depiction of that. Emma Thompson plays a retired schoolteacher who hires a male escort to help her achieve an orgasm for the first time. There’s something very beautiful and vulnerable about her quest that seems to be missing from Babygirl. Sexual politics in the work force has also been covered a lot, including last year’s great indie film Fair Play in which a couple is faced with the woman getting a promotion over the man putting her in a position of power and their secret relationship on the line.
Such films take the topic of sex and power in some interesting directions. Babygirl lacks some such ambitions. It feels a bit like the HBO Max series Industry, which is filled with characters who are only interested in sex, drugs, and power. True, Kidman’s character does seem to suffer some from some serious loss of sexual play in her life. Her actions are somewhat understandable yet we never really learn much about her past. Similarly, we don’t know much about Samuel, what his sexual background is, and what his corporate ambitions are. As such, what we experience is more of the sexual behavior between the two than a larger message about 21st Century intimacy needs and power dynamics.
Kidman is good in the role. She’s got a wide range of emotions to express from domineering executive power to submissive needs, anger, insecurities, shock, and depression. Based on that, she’s quite remarkable. However, we’ve already seen her accomplish this in so many other great roles. The biggest comparison here goes back to her role on Big Little Lies in which her character has a very complex abusive relationship with her husband, played by Alexander Skarsgard.
This is not to say there isn’t anything to admire about the film or performances, it just feels like there are other versions of this story that could be told. I’d have liked to have seen, for instance, more emphasis on the parallel between Kidman and Banderas’s relationship and the factory-like automation industry her character is expanding. Perhaps that metaphor is clear enough but I wanted more.
Nicole Kidman is still great and I’m always rooting for her regardless of the similarities in some of her roles. If you find her alluring and like to hear her moan, you might really get something out of this one.
Babygirl opens on December 25th.
FILM: BABYGIRL
DIRECTED BY: HALINA REIJN
STARRING: NICOLE KIDMAN, HARRIS DICKINSON, ANTONIO BANDERAS
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
Nicole Kidman has been on quite a journey as an actress in the last couple of decades. Not only has she amassed a bunch of Oscar nominations and one win for her film roles, but she has also conquered television, including an Emmy win for Big Little Lies. So, coming in to her latest film project, Babygirl, there’s anticipation: Will she do something totally different or continue on the same familiar path? In this case, it’s more the latter because the film and her character feel like extensions of the worlds she’s been circling in lately, including recent TV projects such as The Perfect Couple and The Undoing. She’s playing complicated, beautiful, and multi-layered women. However, it’s starting to feel a bit like she’s been there and done that now more than a few times.
In Babygirl, she plays Romy Mathis, a high-powered CEO of a corporation that specializes in automation. However, her biggest obsession at the moment is on her sex life. We learn very quickly that she has an unsatisfying relationship with her husband Jacob, played by Antonio Banderas. When the new interns arrive at her office, she becomes immediately attracted to Samuel, played by twenty-something year old Harris Dickinson. She can’t take her eyes off him and he can’t take his off her. They begin a torrid affair in which their roles as mentor/protégée become reversed: He thinks she wants him to tell her what to do and thus the connection gets extra steamy.
There are so many directions this idea could go. After all, the film was produced in the era in which MeToo and sexual politics have been on the forefront of the news, public discourse, and our entire world of entertainment. So, it’s a little surprising how much writer/director Halina Reijn leans into the affair. We’ve seen many such stories but it’s not clear what new she is attempting to accomplish here. On the one hand, there is the sexually frustrated older woman who needs a younger man to feel something she might not have ever been able to feel before. I preferred the 2022 film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, in its depiction of that. Emma Thompson plays a retired schoolteacher who hires a male escort to help her achieve an orgasm for the first time. There’s something very beautiful and vulnerable about her quest that seems to be missing from Babygirl. Sexual politics in the work force has also been covered a lot, including last year’s great indie film Fair Play in which a couple is faced with the woman getting a promotion over the man putting her in a position of power and their secret relationship on the line.
Such films take the topic of sex and power in some interesting directions. Babygirl lacks some such ambitions. It feels a bit like the HBO Max series Industry, which is filled with characters who are only interested in sex, drugs, and power. True, Kidman’s character does seem to suffer some from some serious loss of sexual play in her life. Her actions are somewhat understandable yet we never really learn much about her past. Similarly, we don’t know much about Samuel, what his sexual background is, and what his corporate ambitions are. As such, what we experience is more of the sexual behavior between the two than a larger message about 21st Century intimacy needs and power dynamics.
Kidman is good in the role. She’s got a wide range of emotions to express from domineering executive power to submissive needs, anger, insecurities, shock, and depression. Based on that, she’s quite remarkable. However, we’ve already seen her accomplish this in so many other great roles. The biggest comparison here goes back to her role on Big Little Lies in which her character has a very complex abusive relationship with her husband, played by Alexander Skarsgard.
This is not to say there isn’t anything to admire about the film or performances, it just feels like there are other versions of this story that could be told. I’d have liked to have seen, for instance, more emphasis on the parallel between Kidman and Banderas’s relationship and the factory-like automation industry her character is expanding. Perhaps that metaphor is clear enough but I wanted more.
Nicole Kidman is still great and I’m always rooting for her regardless of the similarities in some of her roles. If you find her alluring and like to hear her moan, you might really get something out of this one.
Babygirl opens on December 25th.