Babygirl review: the stakes are high but the orgasms seem worth it

It’s unfortunate that Nicole Kidman has become almost as famous for her strangely ageless face as for her considerable courage and acting talent when given a good role. It’s a relief then, to see her in the erotic thriller Babygirl, looking all of her 57 years, yet playing a character who undergoes injections and infrared saunas as part of her routine to maintain the undeniably beautiful façade.

Kidman plays Romy, the high-powered CEO of a New York robotics company. Her use of age-defying technologies is not so much about vanity as it is about maintaining power, control and relevance in a competitive and sexist corporate environment. (A bit like the movie business, really …)

We first meet Romy in bed, thrashing atop a man later revealed as her husband, the handsome, successful playwright, Jacob (Antonio Banderas). The camera stays uncomfortably close, refusing to let us see both characters in the same frame.

There’s something out of whack here, even though he tells her he loves her. It’s not what she needs. She sneaks off to watch submissive porn on her laptop, finishing the job on her own. Her terrible secret is this: she’s never had an orgasm with Jacob in more than 20 years of marriage. But how could she admit that now?

At work, Romy rehearses speeches for shareholders while her ambitious young assistant (fellow Australian actor Sophie Wilde, also excellent) dabs concealer on her boss’s Botox bruises. The mask is maintained until Samuel, a scrappy young intern, arrives and refuses to pay the respect she’s accustomed to.

Samuel is played by UK actor Harris Dickinson, whose modest geeky good looks were used to good effect as the insecure male model in Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness (2022).

ScreenHub: Triangle of Sadness review: eat the rich

The first time Romy sees Samuel, he subdues an out-of-control dog on the street with a cookie from his pocket, and it’s not long before he’s subduing her too, sending her milk from the bar, making her lap it from a bowl, and ordering her to undress in front of him in hotel rooms around the city.

She squirms, resists unconvincingly and gives in to the rush. She’s risking her reputation, her job, and her realistically functional family (which includes two teenage daughters who tease her about her lips).

The stakes are high, but the orgasms seem worth it, for a while.

To put it all like this is too bald, however, and misses the delicious pleasure of watching a subtle, shifting exchange of power between an older woman and a cocky young man.

Like the stunning lesbian drama Duke of Burgundy, another film about submissive desire, this one shows how the supplicant’s pleasure is determining the whole game. In this far more heterosexual Hollywood treatment of the subject matter I expected an erotic thriller where boring blackmail and serious danger might lurk in the second and third acts.

But Babygirl, written and directed by Dutch actor-turned-director Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies, Instinct) is far more interesting than that. In interviews Reijn has talked of being fascinated by the orgasm gap and by the shame that most women feel about their bodies.

Reijn’s feminist script feels very much of this moment in the way it treats female desire, as well as diversity, equity and morality in the modern workplace – not to mention the tricky dance of asking for and receiving consent while still keeping it sexy and not too mechanical. We should credit intimacy coordinator Lizzy Talbot, and make special mention of a shirtless dance that Samuel does for Romy in direct but gender-inversed homage to the dance Kim Bassinger does for Mickey Rourke in 9½ Weeks.

A terrific soundtrack and music by Cristobal Tapia de Veer helps keep the film fluid and dynamic, as does the gorgeous cinematography by Dutch DoP Jasper Wolf, who manages to balance raw intimacy and polished sensuality. Look out for a truly spectacular dance party scene with strobing lights when Romy ventures dangerously across the bridge from Manhattan to Queens for a rave that Samuel dares her to attend.

Those looking for hardcore bondage or BDSM dynamics will be disappointed. What we have here is far gentler and more playful. The most shocking thing on screen is the intimacy and the vulnerability from Kidman, who allows herself to appear entirely naked, raw and fragile – though I can’t actually remember seeing a single pube or nipple.

It’s not that the camera is too ‘tactful’ but it’s far more interested in the face than the body, probing behind that pale freckled skin as if trying to get into the headspace of this overly controlled and scheduled wife, mother and businesswoman.

This is the crazy-brave Nicole we admired in the likes of Dogville and Birth, prepared to be ‘ugly’ and degraded, not just phoning-it-in as one of the brittle rich beauties we see in television mysteries like The Perfect Couple, The Undoing and Big Little Lies. Kidman has already won Best Actress at Venice and a Golden Globe nomination for Babygirl, but surprisingly no Oscar nods.

While some might see the film’s final act as a disappointment, I see an understated triumph that allows each character to get what they need to thrive. The fact that we have a mainstream film about a woman in her 50s driven by the desire for sexual pleasure and allowed to pursue it at all, is a kind of triumph in these times.

And while Babygirl certainly shouldn’t be seen as a marital guide for all sexual mismatch, it may open up some frank and productive conversations about what women really want.

Babygirl is in cinemas from 30 January 2025.