
Despite Kidman’s audacious portrayal, Halina Reijn’s film about a corporate executive’s sexual journey with her intern is masterfully done but dubious in its foundation.
Romy Mathis owns a large country home and a duplex apartment in the city. She is blessed with a devoted husband, two gorgeous girls, and an illustrious job as the CEO of Tensile, a generic “robot business” that operates a profitable warehouse delivery program. Romy, to use the language of a glossy women’s magazine, has it all, therefore it seems to reason that she yearns for something more. Soon after, she starts a risky relationship with her office intern, luring him into the men’s room to the sounds of INXS’s Never Tear Us Apart.
Nicole Kidman portrays Romy, and despite her bright and strong portrayal, there’s a hint of anguish in it, as if she’s not quite sure she’s signed up for everything. She is the lead in Halina Reijn’s film, which had its Venice debut today. If it weren’t so naively self-satisfied and exuberant about its own audacity, it could have been this year’s Tár, the other major drama about a powerful woman kept low. Though it presents its observations on sexual desire and interoffice dynamics with the polished, upbeat professionalism of an annual business presentation, Babygirl does have some insightful and occasionally thought-provoking things to say about these topics.

Romy has never been fully fulfilled with her husband, thus it comes out that the first climax in the movie was staged. The movie opens with an orgasm and ends with another. She admits to having “dark thoughts,” obsessively masturbates in front of her laptop, and yearns for adventure to break free from her routine. This helps to explain why she finds Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a twentysomething gofer at Tensile’s New York office, so attractive. His puckish confidence veers dangerously close to insolence. The intern is looking for guidance and wants her to provide it to him. One morning upon arriving at work, Romy witnesses him training a stray dog on the sidewalk. Maybe, she thinks to herself, he can also tame her.
Similar to Romy’s opening scene, the film is a burlesque, a performance that is masterfully executed yet has dubious undertones. The snappy 2022 smash Bodies Bodies Bodies gave Dutch filmmaker Reijn, who is now based in New York, his breakthrough hit. However, this picture is less fulfilling and occasionally very ridiculous. Romy and Samuel are now involved in a destructive and tumultuous relationship. He is giving her milk in saucers to the strains of George Michael’s Father Figure, leaving her impoverished husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), to manage the children and attempt to helm his most recent off-Broadway production. The distribution of power changes. Samuel begins to believe he is in charge.
He makes it clear that he has a strong hold on Romy and that all it would take to put an immediate stop to her career is one phone call. He asks, grinning, “Does it turn you on when I say that?” and by now she’s so worked up that, yeah, probably does.

Does mentioning that Romy and Samuel’s quest doesn’t always end happily constitute spoilers? For our lust-stricken lovers, there’s no tidy happy ending—just more chaos, more tension, and finally, a yelling fight beside the Christmas tree. Reijn’s drama is commendable for its absence of cheesy moralizing and for implying that even the riskiest of affairs may have unanticipated rewards. However, it comes too little, too late, and despite the film’s thrilling, seesawing power battles and exuberant carnality, the sensations feel forced and artificially compressed. As she leaves the track, Babygirl resembles a box straight out of Tensile’s upstate delivery warehouse in terms of neatness and anonymity.
Babygirl had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival and will be available for purchase on December 25 in the US and January 10 in the UK.