114 mins |
Rated
R (for strong sexual content, nudity and language.)
Directed by Halina Reijn
Starring Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde, Anoop Desai, Harris Dickinson, Nicole Kidman, Antonio Banderas, Jean Reno
A friend once told filmmaker Halina Reijn about a woman who, across her entire 25-year marriage, had never experienced an orgasm with her husband. She was both awed by and in some
ways unsurprised by that possibility.
In Babygirl, Romy, played by Nicole Kidman, is a product of this internalization. As a polished CEO and a mother and wife living in New York City, she lives in a world of careful control, tight scheduling, and an all-too-keen awareness of how she’sperceived at the heights of a male-dominated field. In her own long-term marriage, she has also never truly found pleasure with her sweet, caring, and artistically driven husband, Jacob(Antonio Banderas).
In its deliciously playful provocations, Babygirl explores the tender, the wickedly funny, and the unexpectedly romantic places that a certain kind of repression can lead to, and where someone will go to find release.
In Reijn’s hands, the genre’s deliberate goading of sexual mores becomes something deeply human and bitingly fun, an erotic thriller for an age where everything is permitted, but the American puritanical moral impulses still run deep. And ultimately, at the core of the forbidden fruit is a seductive, tender act of self-acceptance for its protagonist.
Read more...
A friend once told filmmaker Halina Reijn about a woman who, across her entire 25-year marriage, had never experienced an orgasm with her husband. She was both awed by and in some
ways unsurprised by that possibility.
In Babygirl, Romy, played by Nicole Kidman, is a product of this internalization. As a polished CEO and a mother and wife living in New York City, she lives in a world of careful control, tight scheduling, and an all-too-keen awareness of how she’sperceived at the heights of a male-dominated field. In her own long-term marriage, she has also never truly found pleasure with her sweet, caring, and artistically driven husband, Jacob(Antonio Banderas).
In its deliciously playful provocations, Babygirl explores the tender, the wickedly funny, and the unexpectedly romantic places that a certain kind of repression can lead to, and where someone will go to find release.
In Reijn’s hands, the genre’s deliberate goading of sexual mores becomes something deeply human and bitingly fun, an erotic thriller for an age where everything is permitted, but the American puritanical moral impulses still run deep. And ultimately, at the core of the forbidden fruit is a seductive, tender act of self-acceptance for its protagonist.
