Nicole Kidman is a tour de force as a woman having a sexual awakening in Babygirl

"We would try things and I just loved how open and brave and smart [Harris Dickinson] was," Nicole Kidman told
Hits Radio. (Supplied: A24)

By Sonia Nair

Babygirl opens with Romy (Nicole Kidman) in the throes of sex with her husband of 19 years, Jacob (Antonio Banderas). She's making all the right sounds, but as soon as it's over and Jacob has descended into a post-coital stupor, Romy steals away to watch porn on her laptop and pleasure herself. She didn't orgasm with Jacob and, it turns out, never has.

The film cuts almost immediately from the intimate space of the home and its entombed secrets to the sterility of a warehouse. Romy is the CEO of a robotics company that trades in a rote automisation replicated in her characterisation.

Perennially put-together and guarded with nary a tendril of hair askew, Romy pursues perfection in every realm of her life, meticulously assembling lunch boxes with hand-written notes for her two daughters as seamlessly as she spouts meaningless corporate nothings in promotional videos and undergoes periodic botox injections.

Nicole Kidman plays Romy, who is apparently happily married to Jacob, played by Antonio Banderas. (Supplied: A24)

There's a touch of Severance in the world-building of Babygirl. Dutch writer-director Halina Reijn nails the humdrum details of everyday office life, from the insipid office small talk to Romy's swapping of pragmatic runners for teetering heels as soon as she steps into her office.

But Romy's aloof detachment starts to come undone with the arrival of a new intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), who is nearly 30 years her junior. Confident and impetuous, bordering on rude, Sam intuitively guesses what Romy wants from him, and the chemistry between them is palpable. So begins an affair conducted within the privacy of hotel rooms, in the obscured nooks and crannies of their office.

There's a clear power differential in an illicit relationship between a CEO and an intern, but Sam signals early on that he holds all the cards in this affair, subverting the dynamic from the outset. Not only is Sam the dom to Romy's sub, but he also warns her that he could easily dismantle her professional and personal life if he were to go public with their affair.

Romy is keenly aware of this dynamic — it's what imbues their escalating liaison with the electricity and sexual charge that's so sorely missing in her own marriage. That, and his commands for her to lap milk from a saucer, prostrate on all fours in an impossibly tight pencil skirt, and skulk in the naughty corner like a child being disciplined.

Babygirl is less sexually explicit than its trailer suggests. The moments of raw, unadulterated pleasure Romy experiences with Sam are carnal and guttural, but Jasper Wolf's camera angles fixate almost exclusively on Romy's face as she engages in these acts.

Babygirl is less intent on capturing these sexual acts in their entirety — the sex itself is never particularly risqué — and more concerned with Romy's interiority as she metamorphoses and has her most perverse sexual desires realised.

For a film riven by depictions of clandestine sex and unmitigated desire, Babygirl is surprisingly tender and funny. 

Both Romy and Sam experiment with different ways of being as they fumble, at times, through their dominant-submissive relationship. Romy trying to communicate her sexual preferences to Jacob while draped in a bedsheet because she's too embarrassed is as humorous as it is painfully affecting.

Cristobal Tapia de Veer's soundtrack is one of Babygirl's greatest accomplishments, setting the tone for much of the film. Montages of Romy and Sam's affair unfold to the wonderfully apt 'Father Figure' by George Michael and INXS's 'Never Tear Us Apart'. Le Tigre's jaunty pop-punk anthem, 'Deceptacon', backdrops Romy's intensified discomfort as she catches Sam's eye while children dance between them at her daughter's birthday party.

One of the film's most memorable scenes sees Romy joining Sam at a rave, with strobe lights illuminating their movements in haphazard flashes while jarringly discordant electro house music by Yellow Claw plays.

Costume design duo Kurt and Bart's work is another highlight — everything Kidman wears looks as though it was sculpted to her body.

Tangential details in the film carry acute symbolism as Romy's life unravels and is reflected by those around her. Her playwright husband, Jacob, is directing the Henrick Ibsen play Hedda Gabler, a narrative centred on a woman perilously trapped in a marriage and constrained by society's expectations of her. 

On the surface, Romy appears perfect in almost every realm of her life. (Supplied: A24)

Romy's behaviour is mirrored on a more minute scale by her older daughter, who cheats on her own girlfriend with a neighbour and is caught surreptitiously smoking by Romy late one night, who then joins her. There's also a surreal quality to many of the scenes, begging the question: did some of it even happen?

Kidman goes above and beyond in a role where she bares herself metaphorically and physically in a heightened show of vulnerability, but the celebrated evolution of Romy herself may have been more convincing with a more sharply realised character. With a whisper of a backstory concerning a childhood spent on a commune, Romy's motivations and impulses remain opaque even as her actions escalate (though Babygirl, thankfully, never veers in the direction of kink-shaming Romy, as so many portrayals of BDSM do).

Ultimately, Babygirl may not be saying anything particularly new or subversive about female desire, the pursuit of pleasure over shame and sensibility, and questions of power and consent. Nor are the stakes so heightened that it feels like an erotic psycho-thriller — the absence of punishment for Romy is a clear departure from the 1990s films that Reijn took inspiration from.

But it's a rollicking ride all the way, a tour de force performance from Kidman, and an often-unexpected treatise focused less on the moral consequences of a woman transgressing, and more on the liberation afforded by the reclamation of self.

First published at ABC News, January 31, 2025