Babygirl (2024)
Directed by Halina Reijn
A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern.
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21 films that influenced Babygirl
What critics say influenced Babygirl
It's a gentle reminder how, in some small regards, we've also inched away from children being used as tools sanctioning their mothers' sexuality a la celebrated Douglas Sirk melodramas, such as All That Heaven Allows (1955) or There's Always Tomorrow (1956).
It's a gentle reminder how, in some small regards, we've also inched away from children being used as tools sanctioning their mothers' sexuality a la celebrated Douglas Sirk melodramas, such as All That Heaven Allows (1955) or There's Always Tomorrow (1956).
There are shades of Steven Shainberg’s Secretary in Babygirl, but by its finale, it ends up strangely reminiscent of Paul Mazursky’s revelatory Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. In that film, Mazursky follows the four leads as they wander out of their hotel room following their (kind of) sexual escapades. They dreamily wander around Las Vegas, drifting back to their respective partners to gaze up at them lovingly before the screen fades to black.
But rather than structure Romy’s descent into lusty madness as a force of utter Freudian annihilation (as with Michael Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher,” clearly a reference here, as is Steven Shainberg’s 2003 law office kinkfest “Secretary”), Kidman and Reijn make Romy’s transformation a joyously destructive one instead.
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Dickinson's performance is compelling as well, coming off as opaquely juvenile, like what Tom Cruise's character in Risky Business might like after graduating from Princeton.
As Romy risks her career and her family in pursuit of great (read: kinky) sex, I kept thinking about what Robert Loggia told Glenn Close in "Jagged Edge," way back in 1985: "Is that your head talking, or another part of your anatomy?"
At a certain point, when Samuel breaks into Romy's domestic sphere, their fantasy bleeds into a dangerous reality, and the simmering tension of exposure hits home, a la Fatal Attraction (1987).
Often, such blunt examinations of BDSM sex fantasies, while having higher intentions, end up feeling silly, their failure to land the emotional, psychological underpinnings of sexuality landing in camp territory, such as Jennifer Lynch's infamous Boxing Helena (1993).
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Although it earns comparisons to other S&M or sexual compulsion narratives such as Secretary (2002) or Shame (2011), this isn't a film about despair or disgrace.
…the bar for erotic BDSM thrillers is notoriously low (9½ Weeks and Fifty Shades of Grey have betrayed kink again and again) even with certain exceptions (the stellar Bound, Jane Campion’s In the Cut)––simply knowing your stuff doesn’t get you far.