The demands of achieving both one-day shipping and a satisfying orgasm collide in Halina Reijn鈥檚 鈥淏abygirl,鈥 a kinky and darkly comic erotic thriller about sex in the Amazon era.
stars as Romy Mathis, the chief executive of Tensile, a robotics business that pioneered automotive warehouses. In the movie鈥檚 opening credits, a maze of conveyor belts and bots shuttle boxes this way and that without a human in sight.
Romy, too, is a little robotic. She intensely presides over the company. Her eyes are glued to her phone. She gets Botox injections, practices corporate-speak presentations (鈥淟ook up, smile and never show your weakness鈥) and maintains a floor-through New York apartment, along with a mansion in the suburbs that she shares with her theater-director husband ( ) and two teenage daughters (Esther McGregor and Vaughan Reilly).
But the veneer of control is only that in 鈥淏abygirl,鈥 a sometimes campy, frequently entertaining modern update to the erotically charged movies of the 1990s, like 鈥淏asic Instinct鈥 and 鈥9 1/2 Weeks.鈥 Reijn, the Dutch director of has critically made her film from a more female point of view, resulting in ever-shifting gender and power dynamics that make 鈥淏abygirl鈥 seldom predictable 鈥 even if the film is never quite as daring as it seems to thinks it is.
The opening moments of 鈥淏abygirl,鈥 which A24 releases Wednesday, are of Kidman in close-up and apparent climax. But moments after she and her husband finish and say 鈥淚 love you,鈥 she retreats down the hall to writhe on the floor while watching cheap, transgressive internet pornography. The breathy soundtrack, by the composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, heaves and puffs along with the film's main character.
One day while walking into the office, Romy is taken by a scene on the street. A violent dog gets loose but a young man, with remarkable calmness, calls to the dog and settles it. She seems infatuated. The man turns out to be Samuel (Harris Dickinson), one of the interns just starting at Tensile. When they meet inside the building, his manner with her is disarmingly frank. Samuel arranges for a brief meeting with Romy, during which he tells her, point blank, 鈥淚 think you like to be told what to do.鈥 She doesn't disagree.
Some of the same dynamic seen on the sidewalk, of animalistic urges and submission to them, ensues between Samuel and Romy. A great deal of the pleasure in 鈥淏abygirl鈥 comes in watching Kidman, who so indelibly depicted uncompromised female desire in Stanley Kubrick鈥檚 鈥淓yes Wide Shut,鈥 again wade into the mysteries of sexual hunger.
鈥淏abygirl,鈥 which Reijn also wrote, is sometimes a bit much. (In one scene, Samuel feeds Romy saucers of milk while George Michael鈥檚 鈥淔ather Figure鈥 blares.) But its two lead actors are never anything but completely magnetic. Kidman deftly portrays Romy as a woman falling helplessly into an affair; she both knows what she鈥檚 doing and doesn鈥檛.
Dickinson exudes a disarming intensity; his chemistry with Kidman, despite their quickly forgotten age gap, is visceral. As their affair evolves, Samuel鈥檚 sense of control expands and he begins to threaten a call to HR. That he could destroy her doesn鈥檛 necessarily make Romy any less interested in seeing him, though there are some delicious post-#MeToo ironies in their clandestine CEO-intern relationship. Also in the mix is Romy鈥檚 executive assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde, also very good), who's eager for her own promotion.
Where 鈥淏abygirl鈥 heads from here, I won鈥檛 say. But the movie is less interested in workplace politics than it is in acknowledging authentic desires, even if they鈥檙e a little ludicrous. There鈥檚 genuine tenderness in their meetings, no matter the games that are played. Late in the film, Samuel describes it as 鈥渢wo children playing.鈥
As a kind of erotic parable of control, 鈥淏abygirl鈥 is also, either fittingly or ironically, shot in the very New York headquarters of its distributor, A24. For a studio that鈥檚 sometimes been accused of having a 鈥渉ouse style,鈥 here鈥檚 a movie that goes one step further by literally moving in.
What about that automation stuff earlier? Well, our collective submission to digital overloads might have been a compelling jumping-off point for the film, but along the way, not every thread gets unraveled in the easily distracted 鈥淏abygirl.鈥 Saucers of milk will do that.
鈥淏abygirl,鈥 an A24 release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for 鈥渟trong sexual content, nudity and language.鈥 Running time: 114 minutes. Three stars out of four.
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This review has been updated to correct that Reijn is Dutch, not Danish.
