Babygirl is really, really, REALLY GOOD.
Outstanding acting by sexy/brainy girl boss CEO Nicole Kidman (I saw her bare nekkid on Broadway many years ago, s'true. Her "apple-cheeked rear"—to quote Manohla Dargis in the NY Times review of Babygirl—was the actual USP of that Broadway play, whose name is lost to the mists of time. Oh wait, a quick Google search reveals it was David Hare's The Blue Room) and intern-on-the-make Harris Dickinson, who is a DICK with a Capital "D" here (and what's in a name?).
This A24 film signals a return to a more adult approach to adult subjects in art cinema. It's all about power plays in the boardroom and bedroom. And fer sure, 'twas not a bored room at the Village East Angelika today. Lots and lots of rapt, silent teenage girls worshipping at the shrine of Nicole and taking notes (and a few alte kaker cineaste couples—like us).
Whiz kid Dutch director Halina Reijn (educated in Maastricht, my favorite city in the Netherlands, but of course!) grabs the reigns of Hollywood directorial power here in what probably will be the most talked about film of the year (shoots to #1 on my list anyway) once the dust settles on A Complete Unknown.
A mash-up of Eyes Wide Shut (Kidman's dream fantasies in that flick are here played out in real-time), Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, 9½ Weeks, and let's see, what else—I could cite a whole slew of other films (the problem for me as a reviewer of anything is I am cursed with highly developed pattern recognition skills), Babygirl will do for female masturbation on the big commercial screen what has been the stock in trade of underground Paris-based ex-pat erotic photographer Roy Stuart for many a year.
The whole concept of what goes into the making of a successful marriage/love relationship is anatomized and critiqued in a very seductive and entertaining way, with helpful hints given to cuck Antonio Banderas by Dickson in a "hale fellow well met" semi-reconciliation scene near the end.
Strutting macho Latino theater director Banderas is herein reduced to tears and a panic attack at the big reveal of his boss wife Kidman's torrid, panting-and-moaning orgasmatronic affair with lowly intern Dickinson, only to have (spoiler alert) the whole sordid mess, which threatens to destroy Kidman's hegemonic control of her personal service robotic corporation—I can't really explain what it is the company actually does—righted eventually by female person of color employee Sophie Wilde, who shames Nicole into doing the right thing and patching things up with hubby so that by the end EVERYTHING IS IN ITS RIGHT PLACE.
A middle-brow movie trope I know, I know. But you forgive Reijn anything here as her whole filmic enterprise is so audacious, smart, and shiny.
The dirty little secret, of course, is that when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary, nay imperative (just ask Caroline) that neither party have the upper hand ALL OF THE TIME. We take turns—She's the Boss! No, He's the Boss!—in the cut and thrust, the basic power dialectic of all successful, non-boring, non-S&M human relationships.
(And then, to further complicate matters, there is always, of course, the concept of "Topping from the Bottom," as John Waters once so elegantly put it at an Alliance Francaise screening of Marguerite Duras's 1977 film Le Camion).
Quite enjoyable, all in all, very well directed, an intriguing score based on what sounds like actual human huffing and puffing by Chilean-born composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, immaculate cinematography, editing, and sensational acting fireworks by Kidman and Dickinson on display.
You've got to LOVE it.