Purely Carnal

Jourdain Searles considers Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl.”

By Jourdain SearlesJanuary 8, 2025

• Film

• Gender & Sexuality

HALINA REIJN’S NEW FILM Babygirl begins with what sounds, at first, like an orgasm. The elegant and statuesque Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman) rides her husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) theatrically, throwing her hair around and looking at the ceiling. The adoring Jacob professes his love to her twice between exhausted breaths. The scene plays out with the kind of passion not often seen on-screen between partners of a certain age. Afterwards, Romy walks out of the bedroom, naked, and picks up her laptop. She begins watching and masturbating to BDSM porn while muffling guttural sounds of pleasure. It’s there that she orgasms for real. The other one was just a performance. After nearly two decades of marriage and two beautiful children, Romy is still playing a role—maintaining the passion even when she doesn’t feel it.

As the CEO of a major shipping corporation, Romy is used to being in charge. As one of the few women in her position—and tax bracket—she is viewed as an inspirational businesswoman who successfully broke through the glass ceiling. But despite the obvious pride Romy has in her own power and accomplishments, there are moments when it seems like she wants to play a different role. The morning after faking that orgasm with Jacob—a playwright—Romy wears a pink floral apron in the kitchen. He teases her for it, seeing it as the feminine costume it is. It’s clear that he married Romy because of her ambition, and he chafes at his wife playing a homemaker role, even if it’s just in the morning. But Romy revels in her femininity, whether it means typing on her iPhone with hot pink casing or keeping up with her Botox injections. Even in the office, Romy prioritizes looking stunning and perfectly manicured at all times. She is living the dream promised by corporate feminism, complete with a hungry young assistant (Sophie Wilde) who wants to be just like her.

But beneath her successful image, what Romy wants most is to be dominated by a man. It’s an urge she has had her whole life, and when she meets the young intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson), he awakens the desires within her. Intuitively, he can tell what she wants before she can bring herself to acknowledge it. The first time Samuel appears on-screen, he’s calming an angry black dog on the sidewalk. The dog attacks someone, but after a moment with Samuel, it’s suddenly calm. Romy looks on, struck by the sight. Later, when she asks Samuel how he managed to do it, he says that he simply gave the dog a cookie. “Do you always have cookies on you?” she asks. In that moment, Samuel knows he has her. Immediately pushing the boundaries of boss and employer, he begins watching Romy intently around the office while asking her probing questions. He chooses her as his mentor, despite her protests, and takes pleasure in the evident discomfort it causes her. Eventually, after another disappointing sexual encounter with Jacob, Romy begins an uneasy affair with Samuel. Between Samuel’s youth and Romy’s inexperience, they make an interesting pair, trying to live out a fantasy that allows them both to explore the erotics of power exchange.

Kidman and Dickinson have a playful chemistry, eyeing each other with lust and amusement. Even though she’s old enough to be his mother, Romy is believably disarmed by Samuel’s confidence and charm. In private, every time she tries to take control of a situation or bring their age difference to the fore, Samuel uses his sexuality to counter that narrative. Dickinson is dressed in shirts and coats that are a little too large for him, and there’s a sense that he’s a boy trying to dress up like a man. But then he looks at Kidman or gives her a command, and it’s as if he grows in stature before our eyes—and hers. There’s no question as to what she sees in him, because it’s all there: the confident way he walks, talks, even laughs. Kidman looks at him with lust and excitement every time they’re on-screen together. And even when Samuel isn’t around, his presence lingers with Romy. In one early scene, she picks up his discarded tie after a party; later, while she’s alone in her office, she smells and caresses it.

Despite its emphasis on freedom, American cinema has always had a prudish approach to sexuality on-screen, linking kinks with villainy and mental instability. But Kidman has long gravitated toward sexual characters, and Babygirl is an ideal showcase for her fearless physicality. Even her moans have a complexity to them—with Jacob, they’re feminine and breathy, but with Samuel, they’re more passionate. He wakes up a purely carnal part of Romy that becomes so distracting that she can’t focus on anything else. After years of shoving down her desires and doing trauma therapy, all of her urges burst to the surface.

In the more than 20 years since Steven Shainberg’s Secretary, BDSM hasn’t shed any of its stigma in Hollywood. Though, if 2022’s Sanctuary and 2023’s comically titled The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed are any indication, filmmakers are becoming more comfortable with exploring these dynamics, at least on Hollywood’s fringe. The latter film seems to be in direct conversation with both Secretary and Babygirl, depicting the daily life and work of submissive women trying to understand themselves while also trying to get off. The Feeling blends kink and cringe comedy to tell an episodic narrative about a young woman who approaches kink as part of her daily life with no shame attached.

Babygirl and Secretary are all about shame—both societal and personal. When lawyer Mr. Grey (James Spader) makes moves on his secretary, Lee (Maggie Gyllenhaal), without any discussion beforehand, she not only responds to his advances but also falls in love with him. Yet he can’t help feeling ashamed for taking advantage of his employee and dominating her sexually. In the real world, there would be harsh consequences for that; within the text, when Mr. Grey cuts her off, Lee finds herself as a submissive and, like the protagonist in The Feeling, she seeks out other dominants. Eventually, she proves her love to him and they reconcile outside of the workplace, living happily ever after. Babygirl starts out similarly—a woman finding herself sexually in the workplace—before Romy is confronted with the reality of her home life. Despite not being sexually fulfilled, Romy loves her husband. What Samuel offers her is purely physical.

Reijn makes an interesting choice casting Banderas, with his handsome face, strong hands and broad shoulders. He’s not the kind of husband one would expect a wife to cheat on. Yet there’s a fundamental sexual disconnect that Romy had chosen, to this point, to ignore. Banderas plays Jacob as a man who sees himself as modern and progressive, with no need to assert his masculinity. Babygirl smartly gives Jacob his own point of view on sex and gender roles—one that puts him, unwittingly, in direct conflict with his wife. When Romy puts a pillow over her face and tells him to fuck her, he can’t do it, explaining that it makes him feel like “a villain.” In another scene, he’s describing to Romy his conflict with the lead actress in his production of Hedda Gabler: “She thinks it’s about desire. It’s not about desire. It’s about suicide.” Why not both? Romy doesn’t ask the question. She doesn’t have to.