REEL | Nicole Kidman Puts 'Babygirl' in A Corner x TIFF 2023

"I think you like to be told what to do."

Toronto International Film Festival

Nicole Kidman stars as a publically powerful but privately submissive CEO in Dutch writer/director Halina Reijn's psychosexual erotic thriller. Babygirl challenges notions of complex power dynamics when Kidman's high-ranking Romy succumbs to a forbidden May-December office affair with a much younger intern (Harris Dickinson).

A none-the-wiser Antonio Banderas co-stars as Romy's loving but somewhat oblivious theatre director husband. They have an otherwise idyllic marriage and home life despite the glaring omission he has never made Romy climax during sex as a result of her kink making her secretly desperate to be dominated. How the film encapsulates a sense of deep female desire through its passionate performances and framing makes the first half such a tightly wound experience before somewhat deflating into some inevitable messiness.

Kidman, Dickinson, and Reijn turn the kinky Babygirl into a seductive extramarital domestic drama about the nature of power with the usual genders and age gaps swapped for a more contemporary bent to its thorny sexual politics. It's a sexy, thrilling watch that's just as messy as it is exacting in its titillation.

Babygirl screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Special Presentations program.


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