Director: Halina Reijn
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Sophie Wilde, Antonio Banderas
Rating: (R16)
★★★+
REVIEWED BY AMASIO JUTEL
When a chief executive comes across a hot intern who awakens her to a world of transgressive pleasure, she risks everything to attain the sexual satiety he provides — that’s missing from her marriage. Babygirl (Rialto) is an impressively tasteful film about lascivious desire, carefully contemplating self-love and the exchange of power, with an elegant sprinkle of comedy to remind us how funny sex can be.
Responding to a career of thrilling, erotic movies, Nicole Kidman’s casting as the lead of the film is as if the part were written with her in mind. Her starkly revealing performance as Romy is seductive and powerful. Balancing this vigour is a profound anguish; a back-and-forth that keeps the tension of the story arc tight throughout.
Harris Dickinson is Samuel, the desirable and demanding intern, whose duelling states of masculine control and meek boyishness make his performance similarly impressively nuanced. He had "won" the movie even before the scene in which he dances half-naked to George Michael’s Father Figure.
The film hinges on the exchange between the patriarchal, corporate power of a chief executive and the power of sexual desire, which Dickinson has in spades. This latter form isn’t measured by salaries or status, but by something far more libidinal and animalistic.
Director Halina Reijn has a keen cinematic eye, with long takes celebrating the power of the central performances. The fierce, rhythmic score heightens commonplace moments, making the movie very sexy, despite its few sex scenes.
