An exceptional performance from Nicole Kidman sees her play a CEO drawn to playing a game of risque and risk with a young male intern, as this somewhat miscalculated film forces us to question the moral quandaries of professional and sexual domination and submission.

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I have read reviews saying no other high-profile actress would dare take up a role like this.  It might be true to some extent, though truer definitely in the more conservative Hollywood circle than, say, European arthouse filmmaking (well, think of, for instance, Isabelle Huppert in Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher). 

In any case, this derring-do from Nicole Kidman might just land her her sixth Oscar nomination.  She plays Romy, the CEO of a high-end tech company, and a loving wife and mother to her husband (Antonio Banderas) and kids. 

She has a problem though—she doesn’t feel sexually gratified until Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a young male intern in her company, chooses her to be his mentor. 

In their scheduled ‘meetings’, things get awkward and not before long, they find themselves drawn to playing a game of risque and risk, where sexual domination and submission form the rules. 

While morally suspect with its themes of extramarital affairs and sordid ‘power plays’, Babygirl doesn’t really care what you think. 

“I think you like to be told what to do.”

Not that it should because director Halina Reijn is more interested in how these adult games can help free one another from the shackles of a prescribed modern existence—that forces one to be happy and contented with all the markers of a successful high life: a high-paying career, a great family, a nice house… and more. 

But where and when does it really end—this chase to the top? Babygirl proposes the salivating prospect of an even higher ‘high’, where individual disinhibition is paired with professional high-stakes.  The higher the stakes of being exposed, the greater the psychosexual pleasure. 

While the film is at times thrilling to watch, Reijn does somewhat miscalculatingly rein in the narrative before it goes too far.  As such, those essential stakes seem to dissipate—and yet somehow Romy is transformed into accepting a renewed existence. 

Whether it is believable or a fantasy, the viewer has to decide if the crumbling of the film’s raison d’être makes or breaks the storytelling experience.  But most would agree that Kidman gave an exceptional performance.

Grade: B-

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