Babygirl

“Is that what you want?”

It’s a charged question. Depending on the tone, it can be an accusation, a taunt, or a come-on. And to answer the question head-on can be an act of extreme vulnerability, trust, and bravery.

Or “radical honesty,” to borrow the eye-rolling corporate speak bandied about at a robotics company run by Romy Mathis (Kidman, sloughing off a gone-stale run of prestige-lite, small-screen mysteries like The Perfect Couple and The Undoing). Romy is seemingly successful and well-liked, but she’s nonetheless feeling pressure from all sides: a boss demanding results; a PR flak, coaching her on the correct image to project (confident but not cocky, super-competent but approachable, strong but soft, and so on); a younger generation nipping at her heels; her feminist teenage daughters, sneering at Mom for getting Botox; and her husband (Banderas), a sensitive theatre director who’s actually not all that sensitive to what Romy likes in bed.

Babygirl starts with a bang; there’s audible moaning before a single image is shown. But pretty quickly we glean what we’re watching here – loving if boring coitus between husband and wife – is not at all what Romy is into, and that performative moaning is not at all what Romy in orgasm sounds like. (It’s actually closer to the sound of dry heaving, to be honest.) For the real deal, Romy has to rely on her own industrious hands – that is, until she meets working-class Samuel (Triangle of Sadness’ Dickinson), a new intern at her company 30 years her junior, and initiates an affair that could be professionally and personally ruinous.

Babygirl is the third feature from Dutch writer-director Halina Reijn, following up 2022 indie hit Bodies Bodies Bodies, and it’s similarly hybridized. In genre and tonality, Babygirl defies easy categorization: Depending on the angle (or how winking the latest needle drop is), it’s a psychosexual thriller, a corporate satire, a pushback on beauty, aging, and gendered expectations, and a sex-positive, pro-kink examination of figuring out what you like and feeling good about asking for it. (It’s also destined to join another Nicole Kidman erotic drama, Eyes Wide Shut, on “surprise, it’s actually a Christmas movie!” holiday watchlists.) For all the provocativeness of its premise, Babygirl is notably committed to nuance, even if the pacing doesn’t always feel intuitive. It marks a major leveling up for Reijn, cements Dickinson’s rising star status, and reminded me – for the first time in a long time – of what a truly terrific Kidman performance looks like ... and, yep, sounds like, too.