Nicole Kidman’s character in “Babygirl” has it all. Almost literally.
She’s the CEO of a powerhouse tech company, has two adoring teens and her dutiful spouse looks suspiciously like Antonio Banderas.
Her descent into lust, the kind we rarely see in modern movies, is the heart of this erotic drama. It’s a shame that the story caps in a cowardly way that feels all too predictable given 21st-century mores.
Kidman’s Romy Mathis oversees a company embracing the edge of our high-tech world. In between digital innovations, she carves out time to meet interns eager to jump-start their careers.
That includes Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a lanky gent who seems unimpressed by the company’s stature … or its leader. He makes a beeline for Romy, forcing a mentorship program with her despite her brutal schedule.
She can’t seem to shake his professional advances despite the power imbalance. He has other intentions beyond career advancement, and Romy has few defenses against them.
Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.
We’ll spare the details, but he coaxes her into a sado-masochistic relationship that threatens everything she holds dear. That includes her doting husband Jacob (Banderas), clueless that Romy isn’t satisfied with their lovemaking.
That’s putting it mildly.
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“Babygirl” offers handsomely choreographed sex scenes that leave little to the imagination. Writer/director Halina Reijn (the criminally overrated “Bodies Bodies Bodies”) has little time for psychological nuance. This is about power, from a CEO who lords over her minions to the lover who brings said CEO to her knees…. And then forces her to lap up milk from a saucer.
That’s one of the few bits that can be revealed.
Romy hungers for something dangerous and exotic. She finds just that in her randy intern, ignoring how the affair could destroy decades of hard work, love and loyalty.
That’s certainly enough to sustain our interest. It also suggests fireworks will deploy in the third act, in some shape or form.
The resolution, alas, isn’t just devoid of detail or emotional resonance. It’s regrettably woke, even though other previous subplots are anything but. One of Romy’s underlings proves duplicitous in ways that skewer feminist groupthink.
It’s unexpected and refreshing. Real life is rarely woke, which is why the cultural scourge stained movie-making over the past decade.
‘Babygirl’ director says the film is her answer to Nicole Kidman’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ role https://t.co/n9jtmJCtCM
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) December 23, 2024
“Babygirl” features another sublime turn from Kidman, although the screenplay’s lack of nuance undercuts her performance. The narrative hints at her troubled past but it’s just lip service. Other psychological elements are equally thin.
This kind of story doesn’t just need a solid ending, an exclamation point to the narrative foreplay, it demands it. Reijn’s third act doesn’t come close. Affairs leave permanent scars. Marriages are never the same, even those that recover in some fashion.
“Babygirl’s” resolution proves glib, malnourished and deeply manipulative. Kidman’s bravura turn, and a romance that will tantalize more than a few viewers, deserve better.
HiT or Miss: “Babygirl” offers steamy interludes and another superlative turn from Nicole Kidman, but the resolution short-changes the film’s best efforts.
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