With “Babygirl,” Halina Reijn’s erotic thriller, all I could think was, Nicole Kidman was too much for Tom Cruise. That’s it, period.
Kidman has turned out to be the bravest actress of her generation. She’s got her Oscar, and appeared on Broadway. She’s had massive hits, and intriguing failures. The latter are almost all experiments that made no money but advanced her acting chops beyond imagination. Think “Fur” or “Birth.” She will try anything that pushes the envelope.
“Babygirl” is a sexual thriller. Kidman, who’s a stunning 57 years old, plays a wealthy, successful mogul named Romy. She’s married to Antonio Banderas’s Jacob, a theater director. They have two cute daughters, the eldest of whom is gay. Romy is a total success on the outside. But she has deep secrets, all to do with her sex life.
When the movie begins, Romy and Jacob are in bed, trying to go at it. The sex is a little graphic for a Kidman movie, and this is just the beginning. Romy makes Jacob think she’s satisfied, but she finishes up in a another room watching porn on her laptop.
It’s not long before Romy has her eye on a company intern that looks like a male model. That would be Harris Dickinson as Samuel, blonde, tall, fit and confident. Soon they are playing sex games in a hotel or anywhere else they can get away with it. They radiate heat. But Samuel seems to get the power dynamic before Romy when he reminds her that one phone call could ruin her life. She doesn’t care.
“Babygirl” could take the route of “Fatal Attraction” as Samuel starts popping up on Romy’s home turf. But Reijn won’t let it go that way. She avoids cliches throughout and always has her eye on a third act. When Jacob and Samuel actually break into fisticuffs, the fight takes an unexpected and civilized turn. This is not going to become a murder mystery.
Kidman plays Romy with utmost subtlety and human infusion. She’s an onion, peeling away layers. Another cliche: she’s a snake, shedding her skin over and over. She knows her obsession with Samuel can ruin her business and family, but she’s not going to let it. Kidman plays the sex scenes hot. She learned from Stanley Kubrick, remember? Her eyes dilate when she’s with Samuel, the first man to give her an orgasm (she tells Jacob whoops). But Kidman is all all about eyes. At other times, when Romy is playing the wife, those eyes explode, go very wide so you can see Romy’s gears turning to figure out her next move. Watch her drink a glass of milk she didn’t order, I dare you.
A note about Banderas, who the has thankless cuckold role. Watch Jacob slowly come to terms with his house burning down, and how he responds to it. Jacob has been a good husband, but he’s no pushover.
Reijn is a celebrated Dutch director and writer with no American credits. What big name star would say yes to this? Give Kidman her props. As with movies like “Rabbit Hole,” she saw the potential. Reijn takes her from boardroom to rave nightclub, lighting up the movie with revelations about Romy’s potential to break free. (It’s not for the Academy but Sky Ferreira’s electronic dance music and the lighting are memorable.) “Babygirl” goes into her win column, and guarantees her an Oscar nomination. You can’t wait to see what she does next.
