Babygirl is a pornographic fantasy mired in very American values

In an American cinema starved for good sex, a film like Babygirl can feel like a revelation. As the movie opens, Romy (Nicole Kidman) is making love with her husband. The film is shot in such a way that it defies, through point of view and framing, both pornographic and male perspectives to focus instead on Kidman’s perceived pleasure. After her husband orgasms and she seems to, she runs instead to her home office; an enclosed glass box overlooking the city. She lies on her stomach, quickly searches for soft BDSM porn and quickly cums. The laptop closes and she returns quietly and efficiently to her high-powered life as a CEO. Pleasure hangs at the edges of her life but remains elusive, ephemeral. 

In front of her office building, a passerby is being attacked by a dog. Frozen in place and struck by the casual animalistic violence, the dog soon turns its attention to her. As it rushes towards her, it suddenly stops, drawn to a young man. The violence stops, suddenly under control. Romy is breathless, the intensity of the moment inspiring fear but also arousal. The young man, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), she will soon learn, has been hired as an intern at her tech company. The two will become entangled in a dom-sub relationship that endangers all of Romy’s success.

Babygirl may have a surface-level understanding of self-annihilating passionate desire, but it does so enclosed within the safe framing of American moralism. It’s a movie that can just barely escape the eye-rolling clichés of its premise through a chic gender swap as it relies heavily and inescapably on grand psychological explainers to make sense of the central dynamic. If the film leans into the idea that a woman like Romy has more to lose than a male counterpart in the same position, it only ends up feeling like the liberal fantasy that positions feminine authority as inherently more morally upstanding. Even if the film deconstructs that idea, it does little to tackle with any level of seriousness the violence perpetuated by the indecent wealth discrepancy presented within the film. As the movie does hand-wringing over everything Romy has to lose, it presents her upscale life of luxury as the pinnacle of success and comfort — it’s as indulgent and shallow as 50 Shades of Grey. 

It’s hard to approach the film as anything other than a bourgeois pornographic fantasy. An older woman who no longer feels desired finds excitement with a younger, authoritative younger man. Though self-destructive, the film always sways back to the status quo; Romy’s lifestyle is never truly criticized. Romy’s desire, rather than threatening or subservient, only ends up bolstering her authority. There is no real transgression as she remains fully in control, even of her downfall. It’s a movie without real edge that utilizes aesthetics that challenge the dominant “male gaze” in only superficial ways. If the film has an erotic edge, it’s empty, devoid of any real meaning.

Part of this lies in the obsession in American cinema to psychologize action and feeling. Romy’s sexual proclivities are comfortably and easily grafted onto pre-existing ideas about powerful people. The film includes a further, vague backstory about her upbringing within a cult — we’re meant to put together all the pieces to make sense of who she is and what she desires. The movie’s shallow understanding of the world means that it feels that presenting an older woman giving into her pleasure is, in itself, a radical act. The need to over-pathologize renders the movie into smooth and non-threatening. It’s a film where everything makes sense intellectually, removing the edge of non-reason and true annihilation at the heart of violent passion. Pleasure, in this case, becomes another luxury to be acquired; a product rather than something subversive.

That being said, it’s hard to criticize either Harris Dickinson or Nicole Kidman. They both give intense and vulnerable performances. Babygirl, unfortunately, is symptomatic of an increasingly rising style of filmmaking that feels the need to over-explain and simplify the world to be more comfortable for a fickle audience. If you’re thirsting for a film about an older woman and a younger man that is actually interesting, just go watch Catherine Breillat’s radical Last Summer, which also released in theatres this year. ■

Babygirl opens in Montreal theatres on Wednesday, Dec. 25.

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