Babygirl (Halina Reijn, 2024)

[brundlefly]

Halina Reijn's Babygirl.

[flyonthewall2983]

Wow

[Mr Sausage]

Yeah,that looks fascinating.

[Matt]

David Erlich on Twitter says

Babygirl is the closest thing we’ll ever get to an Eyes Wide Shut sequel and I loved it. Kidman and Dickinson are both outstanding — so rare and fun to see a movie where the characters genuinely seem unsure what they’re capable of.

This is what I got from the trailer, “What if Alice Harford, 25 years later, finally acted on the impulse her husband suspected her of?” I’m a little glad to see it has that feel. It does seem like Kidman has good chemistry with Dickinson, and he has definitely proven himself capable of so much more than what his pretty face might lead one to believe.

[therewillbeblus]

Babygirl is indeed fascinating. It's a film that does more than flirt with sexuality and psychology's murky relationship with one another, but never in a way that overexplains anything. I appreciated how sexual preferences and a psychological tic to need "stakes" are both differentiated and intertwined - and the liberation from one to the sanctuary of another is part of what makes it a film about 'healing', and particularly people as healers.

I admired the elisions in general - especially after Reijn's last effort, which I hated and felt was too on-the-nose and disrespectful to its audience for not trusting us to get its jokes and concepts. Well, maybe comedy just isn't her thing, because Reijn trusts her audience here beyond measure - from the Big Themes, down to small moments one might miss if we weren't used to getting spoonfed what a text message says or hearing a line repeated back by the other character to ensure we understand what they're thinking. None of these would be offenses if shown - I expected and would've gladly endured them in a few occasions - but by eliding certain content, we're being engaged with on an adult level and can pick up the film's text just fine. It feels really good to be treated like a mature adult, especially in a film this thematically rich.

Kidman may never have been this vulnerable before, and in a just world she'd win the Oscar (though I won't be complaining about Madison at all). Just tremendous work all around. The Eyes Wide Shut references felt more aesthetic than thematic to me, but I definitely felt like I was watching some of the less established 'Kubrick' shots as Kidman was going about her day, like the ones of Cruise living his life in that film. Really looking forward to Reijn's next drama.

[Mr Sausage]

I liked this, although part of me wanted it to be a bit messier and more dangerous. But I'm not offering that as a criticism. Scattered, spoiler-filled thoughts:

Despite the equilibrium/resolution that movie concludes with, I had to wonder if that family will be able to remain whole. Even apart from the ambivalence of the fact that Banderas can now make Kidman cum, but only if she's thinking of the other guy: the whole family dynamics are fraught even before the cheating, and nothing about them is resolved by the end. Banderas and Kidman had lost emotional intimacy before the movie began, and their communication has dwindled. At the table, Banderas is going on passionately about Hedda Gabler, and not only is Kidman inattentive, she has a studied ability to listen just enough to parrot the last sentence back so as not to seem disengaged, something you only get from long practise. She takes seemingly no interest in her husband's work, to the point that she apparently hasn't come to visit one of his rehearsals in many years. They don't seem to talk with each other or express care or concern. Their most substantial interactions are sexual, and those are one-sided. Banderas for his part seems imperceptive. While I can buy Kidman can skillfully fake an orgasm, it is notable that Banderas has never noticed her habit of leaving the room immediately after sex to masturbate to porn. It's not as though it'd be hard to catch her at it--indeed I don't wonder if the prospect of being caught is part of why it thrills her. It certainly thrills her during her affair.

Then there's the children. The one daughter loves to dance, indeed is constantly trying to dance for other people. Not only is Kidman indifferent to her daughter's passion, she's embarrassed by it, and smothers each of her daughter's attempts to dance. That interaction was sad to me. As to her other daughter, Kidman seems indifferent to her up until she catches her daughter cheating on her girlfriend, at which point something interesting happens: Kidman uses their shared infidelity as a way to bond, but then engages in a parent/child role reversal with the daughter taking on the parent role while Kidman becomes the child. The daughter (the only perceptive person in the house, sadly) waits up worried as her mother tries to sneak back into the house from the club, performing a stereotypical parental role. She's also the one who goes to Kidman at the end, giving Kidman words of encouragement and support, and sharing the wisdom she, the daughter(!), has learned from having gone through something similar. Despite the warmth of that last interaction, it too is sad. With her children, Kidman is able to be boss and child, but seemingly not mother.

That parent/child role reversal mirrors the more explicit role reversals of the love plot, with that push-and-pull between Kidman trying to be a mature, adult, parental figure to Harris Dickinson (and seeming inauthentic every time she does it), and her committing to roles that evoke childhood or adolescence. Dickinson, for his part, has a large store of empathy and emotional understanding, such that his confusions are over Kidman's inconsistent behaviour rather than over his own desires, which he seems to be clear on. Indeed it's him on the rooftop after the club who explains the adult complexities of his various relationships and the parts of himself he identifies in each, while Kidman for her part could only manage adolescent jealousy. Dickinson also takes on the role of of the adult for Antonio Banderas, guiding him through a panic attack and offering a quiet, heartfelt apology for having caused the pain. Banderas can only muster an adolescent response, ie. ineffectual violence, received opinions he has to be corrected on, and then a panic attack he has to be guided through.

Anyway, nothing in that family unit seemed healthy to me, and I wonder how long it'll take until combustion.

[Matt]

There are probably spoilers here. I don't know how to talk about this movie without them.

One longs for the deft, subtle hand of an Adrian Lyne or Paul Verhoeven with this kind of material. I jest. Halina Reijn has skill and talent and she should be able to continue to make exactly the movies she wants to make, but the inconsistencies she shows here in her writing and direction are frustrating. There are moments of sheer sublimity here, and then there are moments of such ham-fisted explanation and didacticism that threaten to undo the spell of the film.

Kidman and Dickinson don't just have chemistry but also a clear and unconditional trust for each other as actors, and it comes through in every moment they share on screen. The small choices they make such as facial expressions, eye movements, vocalizations, and gestures tell everything. The first real interaction between Romy and Samuel is perfectly written and executed and sets the tone for the rest of the movie. She absentmindedly asks him, in the middle of her banal business phone conversation, to get her some coffee. Then:

Romy: Hey, how'd you get that dog to calm down?
Samuel: I gave it a cookie.
R: You always have cookies on you?
S: Yeah. Why? (smirking) Do you want one?
R: (piqued but outwardly unamused) No.
S: (softly concerned) You shouldn't drink coffee after lunch. How many do you drink a day?
R: None of your business. Seven.

It's not exactly the "There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour" scene, but Romy's dismissal of and then immediate capitulation to Samuel in that final line tells you everything about what's to come.

Which is why it is disappointing that Reijn feels the need to include scenes of dialogue where everything that is better left being "shown" and not "told" is laid out like a sex-positive counseling pamphlet. Themes of consent vs. coercion, the complexity of female desire, psychologically processing childhood trauma as an adult, and dealing with surprising self-discovery are explored magnificently through small, almost wordless moments and are then later explained with full pages of dialogue as subtle as PowerPoint bullet points. Perhaps the film's didacticism is an overcorrection for the Fifty Shades movies (which seem broadly despised by the D/s community), but it hamstrings what could have been a powerfully enigmatic film.

There's also a somewhat stupid and conventional "torrid affair montage" set to INXS's "Never Tear Us Apart." Then there's a too-on-the-nose use of George Michael's "Father Figure" over what is an otherwise extremely sexy scene, which is then spoiled by an interruptive, unnecessary exchange about safe words. The only reason this dialogue seems to be there is to tell the audience pedantically "Hey guys, safe words are really important for both you and your partner when you're exploring desires like this and oh, my husband is a cuck." It could easily be (and should have been) snipped out to move on to the go-for-broke climax of the scene featuring Kidman eagerly lapping up a saucer of milk.

Speaking of extraneity, the kids are completely useless, or perhaps serve only to underscore the already obvious conventionality of Romy's life. When they're on-screen, you can almost hear the '90s Miramax-style trailer voiceover intoning "Romy has it all: a successful career, a loving husband, two beautiful children, a fabulous Manhattan apartment, and a house in the country with a swimming pool. But will she ever get what she really needs?" Smash cut to Harris Dickinson dancing with his shirt off, leering, while Enigma's "Sadeness (Part I)" plays.

I really appreciate Reijn's complicating Samuel's own feelings about his sexuality and not making him simply a self-assured, one-note Dom. And I appreciate that Reijn makes him a confused, inarticulate soft Dom and not some snarling, whip-wiedling sadist—something pretty rare to see in mainstream-ish movies. This makes him and Romy interesting figures both trying (often clumsily) to navigate the power dynamics of their boss/intern, older/younger, Dom/sub, married/single relationship. In particular, it really complicates all the received wisdom and insufferable "puriteen" online discourse about age-gap relationships where it is always assumed the older person holds all the power. I initially rolled my eyes at the "if you don't do what I say I'll tell your boss" angle, but I did eventually come around somewhat when I understood how it blurred the line between consent and coercion and how it became apparent that risk might be Romy's real turn-on, not submission. But it still comes off more as a stakes-raising gambit than anything else. This kind of threat is treated much, much more thrillingly in Catherine Breillat's Last Summer.

I was also disappointed in the ending which involves all the problems literally and figuratively just going away and everybody learning life lessons. I think Mr Sausage is right to be skeptical about the future of Romy's and Jacob's marriage, but I think we could have assumed that regardless of whether or not he now knows how to please her sexually. The torrent of lies she feeds him as a "confession" tells me all I need to know about the future of their marriage, so I didn't need to be shown a tearful, possibly false reconciliation or that she still fantasizes about Samuel during sex. That said, the repetition of the audio from Romy's first orgasm with Samuel (followed by the sound of the growling dog) over the final scene of her orgasm with Jacob is an clever way to illustrate the latter point.

Let me reiterate that there are magnificent small moments here that I rewatched over and over with delight: The look on Romy's face as she watches Samuel dance at the holiday party (which Reijn frustratingly cuts away from far too early), the shot of his face over the glass of milk during the after-work drinks scene, her shocked reaction to his "good girl" line, his smirking disbelief at her protests of his "unacceptable" behavior, Samuel stroking his tie as he tests how far he can push Romy, the saucer of milk kiss, and the admittedly clichéd but still mesmerizing liberatory dance club scene (which should have been entirely wordless). The dialogue concluding it is completely unnecessary.

And let me also say that the costuming is doing heroic work in this film. Samuel's oversized parka and childish multi-colored backpack that make him look like a schoolboy; his cheap, ill-fitting suit and loose tie at the office; his off-hours "fuckboy" garb; Romy's fussy pussy bow blouses and tight, constricting skirts and dresses—they all convey so much about the characters that they allow Reijn to bravely, entirely eschew backstory. Also the contrast between Esme's buttoned-up office wear (which slyly but more youthfully mimics Romy's) and pulled-back hair when she's nakedly trying to advance her career vs. her more relaxed style and loose, springy hair when she's claiming what she wants is a nice touch.

I watched it twice in a row, so I clearly find lots to like about this film, but it constantly made me think of other—not to say better—films like Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful and Fatal Attraction and Verhoeven's Basic Instinct and Elle. All the winking Kubrick tributes are cute but otherwise unobtrusive visual filigree—little Easter eggs for cinephiles. I suspect this will have a long cult afterlife like Steven Shainberg's Secretary—coincidentally followed up by a film with Nicole Kidman as an unfulfilled wife who becomes embroiled in an unconventional, life-changing, possibly exploitative extramarital relationship.