‘Babygirl’ Could Be a Great Movie — If It Had a Little More Discipline

“Babygirl” is a new movie from A24 and a Dutch director, Halina Reijn, starring Nicole Kidman as a high-powered chief executive, Romy Mathis, who wants to be a boss in the office and a slave in the sheets. It offers a twist on the usual workplace affair because Mathis’s paramour is a younger male intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson). He is willing to do to her what her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), refuses. So far, so 2024.Ms. Kidman delivers a riveting performance as a woman who manages to be both at the summit and at loose ends. Her company automates warehouses — Amazon meets A.I. — and some of the movie’s most gorgeous shots sweep in not legs and lace but colorful expanses of merchandise. Mathis is the ultimate girlboss, but all she’s done is lean in and she hardly has it all. She has never climaxed with her husband, for one. Vanilla is her least favorite flavor.The proverbial snake in the garden is her intern, whom she first sees taming a vicious dog on the street with a well-timed cookie. Soon enough, she wants to be trained via similar methods. They have a courtship of sorts, though it bears the marks of a corporate job interview — problem solving, performance under duress, and comfort with what the role requires. Jacob is meant to be an auteur of the stage, but this script is set for the bedroom.“Babygirl” is a sexy movie, but little of that has to do with actual sex. The score by Cristobal Tapia de Veer, shortlisted for an Academy Award, is breathy and pulsing, merging the soundscape of the coital act with the solemnity of Gregorian chants. It suggests a sonic subterranean sphere of surging desire. One scene where Mathis and Samuel dance at a club is a blast of skin and strobelights. CEOs usually don’t make it down to Bushwick.Nicole Kidman as Romy Mathis in ‘Babygirl.’ Niko Tavernise via A24The movie is uneven, and seems destined for a future as a cult favorite rather than a canonical classic. “Babygirl” can feel like a concept role-playing as a fully fleshed-out film. Samuel perceives that Mathis likes “to be told what to do,” but the film is often unsure about what it wants to be. It flirts between an erotic thriller, a psychological exploration, or “50 Shades of Grey” remixed through a feminist filter. Its kink is being all things to all people.Still, there are memorable stretches, set scenes that unfold with a charged uncertainty. These usually take place between Mathis and Samuel in seedy hotel rooms or office utility closets, but their interior landscapes are more expansive — territories of desire and demand, the gaps between wanting something and asking for it. “Babygirl” is invested in concentric circles of secrets, ones kept from work colleagues, family members, romantic partners, and oneself.Ms. Kidman has covered some of this verboten territory before, in, a quarter-century ago, “Eyes Wide Shut.” There are also echoes of Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” in the tale of a housewife who has everything except what she really wants. The vistas of this movie, though, are less panoramic than those efforts. A pervasive sense of danger is accompanied by the nagging suspicion that nothing is ever really at stake. Where’s the thrill in that?

‘Babygirl’ Could Be a Great Movie — If It Had a Little More Discipline

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