“You always have cookies on you?”

Image: Nicole Kidman in Babygirl (A24).

Ralph Keyes’s 2010 book Euphemania explores the words that make us squeamish and how we turn them into euphemisms. For our Victorian forebears, sex was the foremost subject of circumlocution; even mentioning your legs was too suggestive in some American quarters, where these appendages were reduced to mere “limbs.” This kind of verbal sidestepping seems ridiculous in an era where smut is both at our fingertips and on everyone’s lips: just ask candidates on each side of the recent presidential election. Such an ethos might suggest a modern ambivalence, even banality, towards the topic. Spaces remain, however, where direct talk of sex can evoke discomfort, shame, and especially tantalization. For purveyors of this last tenant, the erotic thriller seeks to bridge what we consider artistic and what we still consider profane, that which life imitates and that which I know when I see it. Films of this type push boundaries while staying front-room fodder for the brick-and-mortar video store. 

Halina Reijn’s Babygirl (2024) understands its moment within the genre without ever quite reaching its limits. The story of an illicit relationship between a married CEO and her younger intern manages to get off the ground, but it sputters in executing an engaging portrayal of intimacy before an ethically ambivalent landing. 

I should say upfront I am perhaps spoiled, as a gay man, with the more explicit depictions of eroticism in recent barn burners like Call Me By Your Name (2017) or Saltburn (2023). I may also be missing something in the chasm that separates my interest in men from one in women. Nicole Kidman’s character owes something to queerness, of course, in that it’s the teenage daughter of her character “having fun” and cheating on a girlfriend, alongside the girlfriend’s forgiveness of the daughter, that inspires Romy’s own forbidden dalliance with an office intern. Despite these points, when a film’s tagline is, “This Christmas, get exactly what you want,” and the results are as trepidatious as Babygirl’s, I can’t help but leave the theater wondering if I — or anyone else filing out — did in fact get what we wanted. 

Kidman’s portrayal of Romy Mathis deserves advance praise. This dashing depiction of a tech company leader is able to bring down to earth a hardened, upper-crust woman nonetheless buffeted by the winds of shifting gender mores. The film opens with Romy and her husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) having sex, followed by an ashamed Romy regressing to the internet to watch a kinky roleplay video so she can finish. The next morning, Jacob questions why Romy likes wearing an apron during breakfast with their kids, suggesting this is too traditional of a look for a woman of her stature. Later, we see her doing an ad read for her company full of copy balancing the masculine rigor of a male-dominated industry and the feminine qualifications necessary to justify Romy’s place at its apex. Through this, we see the coaching Romy has gotten to become a CEO also considered a “nurturer” and “an approachable leader” — monikers I doubt a man in her position would have had to take on. Reijn peppers the film with scenes striking this balance of Romy as wife of her husband, mother of her children, and CEO of her company, while acknowledging the paucity of real-life women in Romy’s position.

From there, we meet Samuel (Harris Dickinson), the 20-something intern who propels Romy into an affair upsetting each of these roles. Samuel attracts her from the moment they first encounter each other on the street, saving her from a dog through his subtle command of it. That dog becomes a symbol of Romy, representing how she sees herself as well as what she desires from Samuel. In the office, he asserts himself at every opportunity, always pushing back against the hierarchy she symbolizes. Ironically, Samuel’s demeanor is never aggressive, or even that confident, something that defines his style when sound-proof meeting rooms turn into dingy hotel rooms. It’s a generational difference that fuels Babygirl’s arguments over what sex in the 21st century should look like. 

Three factors combine to make their actions taboo:

1. The workplace setting, which undercuts the ethics annually inoculated to every American professional post-#MeToo;
2. The marriage, in particular because Romy is having this relationship behind her husband’s back; and
3. The age difference, emphasized by the presence of Romy’s teenage daughters (and her repeated reminders to Samuel that she is, yes, really, older). 

The relationship becomes something for Romy to rebel against each of these roles, creating constant irony in the dominant-submissive roleplay she and Samuel decide to engage in. When Samuel sends her over a glass of milk to drink during a company social hour, a colleague, not knowing who sent it, insists Romy not drink it. The camera stays focused on Romy alone as she downs the glass, staring Samuel down off screen before brushing off her milk moustache. The two of them both enjoy the danger he presents in her life, and even when his presence threatens to destroy these three parts of her life, Romy turns back to him, drawn in by the unknown he represents. Meanwhile, Jacob is directing a production of the 1930 play The Human Voice — seminal to Reijn’s own artistic journey — with the show’s female center referencing “the avalanche that’s going to cover us all.” It’s clear as Romy and Samuel’s situation intensifies that this line foreshadows their trajectory. 

The greatest sin Babygirl ultimately commits is being too tame with its topic. More time is devoted to Romy and Samuel tiptoeing around their taboo than in engaging in it, making it feel like an obvious conclusion when (spoiler) the two are caught. We get close-ups on Romy’s face during the few actual sex scenes, and the intensity shown in her face and how she moves her hands fill in for a more literal depiction of sex. This is a great artistic move, but when you realize this is the most explicit depiction we will see of these two together, it feels disappointing compared to the scene with Jacob that starts the film. Both Romy and Samuel prove to be too timid to form the directional core of the film’s eroticism. Their vulnerability with each other — while realistic, plus a stated desire of Reijn’s to depict — compromises their ability to commit to anything steamy enough to warrant your attention for long. 

Part of this, I’ve realized in hindsight, is that Kidman and Dickinson don’t share much spark together. This isn’t to say the two totally lacked chemistry. The audience at the theater I was at laughed during parts of the most intimate scenes, like when Samuel puts Romy in the corner during their first covert meet-up, or later, when he has her lap at a saucer of milk. Laughter here expresses two things: one, the absurdity of the characters’ actions, but also two, the audience’s squeamishness with what’s on screen. We feel discomfort, which relies on our investment in how these two act with each other. It’s the kind of steaminess that makes us want to take a shower afterwards. 

Rather, their lack of chemistry becomes evident when it comes at the expense of something more fundamental: the belief that their character’s decisions are inevitable. Both Kidman and Dickinson seemed lost, for instance, during a sequence at a warehouse rave. They were acting apart, not quite leaning into each other’s energy, leaving me wondering why Romy felt she had to run across to a different New York City borough to find this man. It killed the inertia that her nighttime car ride across the bridge harbingered. Similarly, I was surprised when, about two-thirds of the way in, Samuel expresses that he found Romy beautiful. This isn’t not to say he was wrong, but little about how the two had interacted up to that point had suggested his interest in the relationship amounted to more than a bemused fling with someone he could control. With even this evidence wanting, how could I justify something like Samuel choosing to drop in at Romy’s house with her husband and kids there, other than as a show of sadomasochism? 

Most of the blame, though, falls on the writing. While Samuel is set up to be a dominator, the stumbling he and Romy experience throughout their illicit relationship does not push that to the fore. Collaboration may be healthy for your garden-variety BDSM romance, but it leaves the enticement of this sort of relationship waiting in the wings. The risk here remains real, and we get glimpses of a growing romantic attraction between the two, but from the movie’s midpoint on, I was left waiting for a proper affair to start. For one, Romy is literally Samuel’s mentor, which could have been an avenue to subvert the basic expectation of a dom-sub dynamic. She might have been a firmer hand in showing the obviously green Samuel how intercourse becomes passion, something that could have shown, rather than told, her age and experience compared to his. Instead, she waffles, unsure “what the words are” to express her desire — otherwise that saturates every other moment of the film — and fails to either commit to Samuel or return to her stable, if unsatisfying, life aboveground.

Whereas every moment in Romy’s vacillation is a point of fixation, we’re given little fleshing out of Samuel. Some fault lies in Dickinson’s portrayal — often too emotionless to get a read on Samuel’s motivations — though I imagine he could only do so much with what he was given. Reijn shares just a few pixels into the image of his character. We gather he’s some kind of wunderkind, able to calculate in seconds how many ping-pong balls can fill a meeting room; we learn, through gleaned conversation, that his father was some kind of wrestler-turned-security guard. None of this explains what his internship is for, or provides a strong anchor for his social background, or provides much insight into his interest in this older, powerful woman. In one scene, we see Samuel dancing in front of a reclined Romy, shirtless, enjoying the full attention she is giving him; it’s one of the few times his presence is fully felt (it’s also the most skin we ever see from him, not boding well for this kind of movie.) No, the story isn’t really about him, a decidedly feminist turn from the erotic thrillers of the 80s and 90s that inspired Reijn. Yet when we know so little about him, how can we trust Romy’s intrigue or understand why she gravitates to him? How can we appreciate him as anything more than a sexual object, and therefore only ever temporary?

Reijn ultimately refuses to let Romy have fun with her bad decision, at the same time cutting a thorough examination of her paramour. Both come at the expense of the plot. Samuel becomes a vessel for Romy’s exploration, never amounting to more than frustration and evangelizing for a sexual freedom without responsibility. I neither believe Samuel as a dom or Romy as a sub, which has less to do with either Kidman or Dickinson and more to do with the circuitous script. 

I have a hodgepodge of other complaints that wore on me as the film’s lasciviousness unraveled. Was there something to the whole story — which felt like it took place over months — instead all happening at Christmastime (besides being an obvious marketing ploy, coming out as this did on Dec. 25)? Was there something tangible to Romy having grown up in a cult and its influence on her sexuality, other than as a pull from Reijn’s own childhood? Was Reijn trying to say something about the sterility of Romy’s sex life with all the shots of her company’s automated shipping operation? Speaking of, my friends, who work in tech, and I were unconvinced of Babygirl’s depiction of that industry through ithis apparent swipe at Amazon — nothing about the company’s operations, interior design, personnel, or hierarchy structure was giving “start-up” as much as a drab Manhattan finance office.

I’d hate you to leave thinking I didn’t like Babygirl — quite the contrary. Romy and Samuel’s liaison is Shakespearean in its ill-fatedness, pulling you in again and again to readjust your predictions of just how badly this will all end. You can despise Romy for cheating on her husband and lying to her children about her affair with a younger man, over whom she is a superior. At the same time, can you blame her? Reijn executes an exacting judgment on corporate expectations of women, including from other women, as Romy’s assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde), turns on its head by the film’s end. Banderas is charming as the slighted husband, desperate to help his wife be happy while unaware or incapable of giving that to her. There is also a camp to Babygirl, whether it’s Romy asking if Samuel keeps cookies on him, or when she’s explaining to Jacob about her dissatisfaction with their sex life and blurts out, “I’ve never had an orgasm with you!” This movie knows how to pull out laughs while still saying something serious.

There are also some inspired cinemagraphic moves. After an early kiss between Romy and Samuel, we hear one of Romy’s daughters scream, “Mom!” before a cutaway shows we’re now at the Mathis’ vacation house. The effect is accusatory, raising our apprehension of getting too comfortable with Romy and Samuel together. When Romy is with Samuel on the roof of the office building later, the camera sometimes lets her leave focus as she moves around, reflecting her mental state as she tries to figure out how she can have this relationship with him — and if that’s worth blowing everything else up over. When Romy is on the ground during sex, the camera meets her there; the angles and direction are always friendly to her, helping to make her a more sympathetic subject.

Even so, Babygirl suffers not only because of its wishy-washy storytelling, but also for its imbalanced moralizing. Like our 19th-century counterparts, we can’t escape preaching about sexuality, though Reijn tries to have it both ways despite her forward-thinking gaze. She provides fodder for audiences to walk away with whatever conclusion they want about almost every aspect of Romy’s sexuality. I was left wondering if the take-away was supposed to be that watching porn or wanting to have sex with other partners was necessarily indicative of a failing marriage — which felt strange, considering how this movie was advertised. Conversely, near the end of the film, Samuel philosophizes to Jacob in stilted language about the Gen Z conception of consent (which, theoretically, would require Jacob’s consent for the relationship, too); Jacob becomes the audience in absentia being soapboxed to. Reijn depicts the pain in modern monogamy, which leaves Romy unable to express what she wants in the bedroom, yet through this exploration of herself, our heroine arrives at no satisfying solution — though Jacob is more now willing to play the part of a “villain” in her fantasies. If nothing else, Babygirl proves how far we’ve come in being able to address desire while still falling short in responding to it.