de facto film reviews 3 stars

Halina Rejin’s Babygirl is already generating awards buzz from critics with anticipation from audiences for how racy the material is. While I think it’s great that seeing a film like this holds mainstream appeal and that she is still accepting fearless roles, the film ends up covering a lot of familiar ground about female repressed sexuality and unruly desire that we have seen done so well before with The Piano Teacher, Unfaithful, Secretary, Elle, and recently with Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer, to name just a few. Perhaps because eroticism in cinema has become tabooer in the last decade, it’s a relief to see it make a comeback in mainstream cinemas. Despite the familiar beats and eventually docile execution, Babygirl triumphs in part because of the magnificent Nicole Kidman, who deservedly won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival back in September for her role as Romy Mathis, a CEO who is in a passionless relationship with her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), in which Romy finds herself compulsively masturbating to porn upon having sex with her husband to reach an orgasm.

Aside from the joyless sex, Romy appears to be happy with her marriage to Jacob. They have a family together with two loving daughters. Jacob is a successful theater director, and Romy is the CEO of Tensile, a company that specializes in “AI” and robots that has plans to have robots replace human labor in warehouses. Romy is about to be featured in a women’s magazine, and many of her younger co-workers and assistants look up to her. Yet, Tensile holds deep desires, and her physical needs have never been met as she’s now in her menopausal years.

Babygirl (2024)

Courtesy A24 Films

Romy ends up being drawn to a young intern named Samuel (Harris Dickinson). He is very self-assured and makes some subtle passes at her in the office. In one obvious metaphor, we see Samuel taming a dog in the city street. Romy ends up being drawn to him, in which the term employee engagement takes on a different meaning once she agrees to an intern-CEO questionnaire that leads to flirtatious exchanges, and the two find themselves kissing each other in an office room. Romy attempts to resist, but she can’t restrain her desires. Even at a bar, we find Samuel buying her a glass of milk and smiling at her across the bar. The two end up meeting at a hotel, and the dynamics of the rendezvous pivot towards Samuel holding dominance and control. The submissiveness of Roma leads to her having deep orgasms, and she feels liberated, even though the relationship becomes toxic. The power dynamics begin to shift as well, where Samuel begins to think he holds power over her, where he says all, he has to do is make one phone call and her career will be over, but he ends up claiming that he’s just saying that in order to keep her turned on.

Of course, the relationship goes awry. Jacob begins to suspect Romy is doing something, especially during backstage afterparties in between his Broadway shows when he needs her support the most. Romy’s teenage daughter Isabel (Esther McGregor) also suspects something as she comes home at odd hours, and she observes her mom isn’t herself. The film avoids lazy moralizing of the carnality and instead focuses on the liberation and equal measures of stress that it creates for all parties impacted by it.

Babygirl Review

Courtesy A24 Films

Films about sexually repressed women are often compelling. I actually hope audiences that enjoy this will seek out a film like Secretary in 2002, which dives into sexual repression in very introspective ways. While Babygirl doesn’t quite fulfill its promise, the film hints at some sophisticated satire with Romy’s assistant Esme (Sophie Wilde), who suspects Romy’s affair, but the character begins to feel lightly sketched, and the character could have brought greater satire and tension to the material. While the film feels edgy, refreshing, and even radical, the third act fizzles out even though Antonio Banderas has quite a few emotionally charged exchanges. The final scene holds some self-discovery, and power dynamics are certainly learned for its protagonist as Kidman’s performance impresses. If adult audiences are craving something sensual and mature with a strong central performance from Kidman, Babygirl succeeds.

BABYGIRL is now playing in theaters