By There are certain genres of film I like to consider myself an expert on. I love to look at all of the latest horror films and I’d like to think I know more than the average person about anime and animation in general. But romance? Not my speed. It’s rare for me to be drawn towards a romance in general, with the few exceptions being romances that offer some unique twist. For example, Lisa Frankenstein was a romance I thought was cute because it was basically the story of Frankenstein with a teenage lovestruck necromancer. I can dig it. The unique premise of Babygirl is “What if we reversed the societal power dynamics of 50 Shades of Grey but still kept the kinky BDSM dynamics?”
That may be a bit of an oversimplification, but it’s the most apt way to describe what watching Babygirl is like. I will say right off the bat that Babygirl is nowhere near as bad as that infamous trilogy of films, but that isn’t exactly a glowing endorsement. It’s getting award-season recognition, but after watching it for myself, I honestly have no idea why that is.
Babygirl
Director: Halina Reijn
Release Date: December 25, 2024 (Theatrical)
Rating: R
From the director of Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, Babygirl is a movie about Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman), a CEO of a powerful New York City tech company. She’s a very business-oriented woman who focuses almost solely on work but is unsatisfied with her sex life. She fantasizes about being submissive to her partner, but her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), wants her to take charge. Eventually, she meets an intern at her company named Samuel (Harris Dickinson) who quickly displays his assertive behavior and tendencies with Romy, eventually developing an affair where Samuel tells her what to do at all times while Romy is forced to obey. Of course, secrets like these can’t last forever, but like most romances, the forbidden nature of the affair is what makes it so enticing.
The reason that I made the initial connection between Babygirl and 50 Shades of Grey is that both movies don’t really have a solid grasp of the fetish subculture that they’re trying to exploit. And look, no shame or disrespect to anyone who enjoys that dom/sub lifestyle, but it’s very quickly apparent that Babygirl doesn’t want to make any meaningful attempt to examine what that kind of relationship is like. It’s a thriller interested in examining the taboos of having an extra-marital affair, one where the power dynamics are completely swapped. By day, Romy is a powerful figure within her company who can make or break a person with just one phone call. By night, she wants to be treated like a dog and have all autonomy taken away from her. It’s predictable for a movie like this, but the core problem is that by offering only a surface-level examination, it makes a lot of the more sexual moments come across as poorly thought out.
One of the core tenets of a relationship like this is consent and establishing rules, but the story forgets to do that until an hour into its just under two-hour runtime. It wants the excitement a relationship like this can offer but doesn’t really get the unique circumstances it needs in order to function. Even when it does establish rules, it’s clear that both sides are woefully underprepared to continue with this relationship, with Samuel coming across like a sociopath half of the time and Romy feeling guilty every time she has an interaction with him. If we’re meant to find these two compelling, then I’m sorry, but Babygirl drops the ball entirely.
Copyright: A24
The problem comes with the casting. Nicole Kidman is a great actress, but to play a character like Romy, you need to be assertive and dominant as well as submissive and meek. That’s what makes the sex so thrilling for her. It’s nothing like how she is in her day-to-day life at all. Kidman simply doesn’t play up that disparity. Her assertive bossy persona feels more like she’s trying to be everyone’s friend and not take charge of the conversation while her meekness is too whispy and embarrassed for herself. There is a certain degree of shame to be expected – she is cheating on her husband after all – but the shame is more how she feels uncomfortable doing the things that she’s apparently wanted to do all her life.
Without that stark difference between her public and private persona, Kidman just feels confused in the role. When she’s good, she delivers a fair enough performance, but when she isn’t, she’s dull. One of the main reasons I wanted to see Babygirl in the first place was because of the chatter I’ve been hearing surrounding her performance and how it’s one of the best of the year, and I have to scratch my head and wonder what everyone is seeing. I think it may be because the role itself is inherently more risque than what she normally does, which deserves at least some credit for how out of her comfort zone she is, but you can easily see how uncomfortable certain scenes are for her.
As for Harris Dickinson, while I haven’t seen him in much other than The Iron Claw and Triangle of Sadness, he has almost no charisma here. His character is meant to be this compelling figure, someone who is so bold and blunt that Romy is willing to risk everything just to be controlled by him, but he has all of the personality of wet tissue paper. He’s outgoing and definitely social, but because we never see him in any environment without Romy, all we see of him is how he’s kind of one-note and nothing without her. He does have anger issues, like when he throws a temper tantrum at the mere prospect of boundaries being established, which adds some depth to him, but not a whole lot.
Copyright: A24
Romy constantly tells him that he’s young and still learning how things work, which is the point. He’s inexperienced and doesn’t seem to know what a healthy relationship is, but the movie never criticizes him in any meaningful way. There is no revelation where he’s condemned for the way he treated Romy. It’s only Romy who bears the brunt of the criticism, which feels weird. I mean, I know I’m a guy who’s saying this, but seeing most of the supporting cast chastize Romy for trying to fulfill her sexual urges while Samuel barely receives any criticism is odd. Yes, there’s a power and age dynamic to factor in, but it still hits a sour note when Samuel effectively gets off scot-free.
All of that could easily be forgiven if the movie was at the very least sexy. Movies like Babygirl exist to be wish-fulfillment fantasies. They’re meant to be saucy affairs to get people feeling hot and bothered, but there are virtually no sparks between Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson. That’s the biggest crime of the film. If the two of them had chemistry, then I probably would have been more forgiving of the narrative faults. After all, who watches a saucy romance for the plot? But when the two of them have no energy together, it makes all of the supposedly sexy scenes feel dead on arrival. It says a lot that after the movie ended, my fiance and I were spitballing hypothetical casts that would have made this movie irresistible (Selma Hayak acting opposite Jacob Elordi would have been delicious in so many different ways).
It’s clear that Babygirl is not a movie meant for me. I’m well aware of that, but even if I’m not the target demographic, I can’t see a lot of people turned on by this. It’s not that it’s bad – it’s still a well-shot and well-paced movie – but the dom and sub-fantasies are surface level at best and the way that affects the rest of the movie is impossible to ignore. Maybe with some better consultants, and actors with more sexual chemistry, the film could have been a real steamy affair worthy of the hype that it’s getting, but as is, it’s just not doing anything really interesting or satisfying. It’s perfect for housewives with nothing else going on to talk about, but nothing more.
