Babygirl is a 2024 drama directed by Halina Reijn and starring Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson and Antonio Banderas.
Romy (Kidman) is a corporate executive in an automated shipping company. She’s also the mother of two teenage daughters, and wife to her stage director husband Jacob (Banderas). One montage shows that she subjects herself to exercise and cosmetic treatments, like botox.
Her backstory is that she was raised in hippie communes, but went into the corporate world, and brings her smartphone to bed with her. Much of her job appears to be performing prepared scripts for corporate videos, full of neoliberal buzzwords. She puts a human face on what is basically an inhuman process, represented by shots of blocky robots working in an automated warehouse.
The pressures of Romy’s seemingly ideal life leave her stretched thin. After faking an orgasm with her handsome and loving husband, she tiptoes to her home office, plays maledom/femsub porn on her laptop, and masturbates while covering her own mouth.
On her way to work, Romy sees a young man take control of a runaway dog. Later, she meets the same young man, Samuel, as one of her company’s interns. She unwittingly signs up for a mentor program and is assigned him.
Gradually, Romy moves into a submissive position with Samuel.
Samuel is underdeveloped as a character, perhaps deliberately to reflect his youth. He’s not a calculating seducer or dominant; instead, he acts on impulse.
As much as Romy is the sub/masochist with Samuel, she still thinks of herself as “the adult in the room”. Even after Samuel insinuates himself into Romy’s family winter retreat, she still talks about herself as looking after him, which upsets him. Her self-control extends to her relationship with Jacob: when she tries to express what she wants from him sexually, she has to hide from him under the sheets, or lay a pillow across her face.
There’s a peculiar subplot in which Esme, Romy’s assistant, (who has been dating Samuel), confronts Romy about her affair with Samuel. Esme doesn’t say this is immoral or unethical. Instead, she says Romy failed to live up to her feminist ideal of what a female executive should be. She effectively blackmails Romy into performing yet another role.
Babygirl is rife with other film references. Romy’s husband is directing a version of Henrik Ibsen’s play Hedda Gabler, referring to female neuroticism, blackmail and scandal. The sight of nearly-nude Nicole Kidman in lavish Manhattan apartment interiors obviously recalls Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. The incompatibility of Romy’s “perfect” image with her masochistic fantasies makes her a modern version of Severine in Belle de Jour. The complex power struggle between Romy and Samuel echoes that of Elsa and Jan in Punish Me. The burden of living up to the irreconcilable demands of being a professional woman recalls Female Perversions.
There are moments when Babygirl leans towards erotic thriller territory, with Samuel threatening her with the possibility of losing everything. But Romy remains self-possessed throughout all this, so Samuel isn’t a credible threat. He could hurt her family and career, but he couldn’t destroy it. Furthermore, Romy never forgets that she got herself into this mess.
After her partial confession of her affair to Jacob, Romy exiles herself to her family home in the country. Of course, Samuel shows up in her pool. Her time with Samuel is interrupted by Jacob, which leads to the two men fighting. When they run out of momentum, Romy mothers both of them, by getting them ice packs for their injuries. Jacob tells Samuel that “female masochism is a male fantasy”. Samuel replies that Jacob’s view of sexuality is “outdated.”
While I agree with Samuel, the more important point of this scene is that while the two men argue about female sexuality, Romy sits and watches, not saying anything. She can’t express her own desires or identity. Without a script to follow in this situation, she has nothing to say.
It takes a visit from Romy’s rebellious older daughter, Isabel, to get Romy out of her slump. Isabel, a lesbian, has been locking horns with Romy over her mother’s inauthenticity throughout the film. This is what it takes for Romy to reconcile with her husband, finally send Samuel away, and take control of her job.
In the last scene, we see that Romy has secretly been having a coerced affair with another, older male executive. She bluntly tells him to fuck off.
(This might be a little too much of a happy ending, in that Romy has lost nothing. By comparison, Punish Me ends with Elsa finally doing the right thing and returning Jan to youth detention, but only after probably destroying her career and her marriage.)
Romy’s relationship with Samuel is a gender-reversed version of the cliche of the male corporate executive who pays to be regularly humiliated by a pro domme. The usual glib explanation is that the man needs to be relieved from the pressures of his job. In this case, the psychology is slightly different.
Babygirl is less about female masochism than it is about people who perform a certain pre-scripted role in their lives. Other emotions and needs aren’t expressed; instead they erupt, in binge drinking, outbursts of rage, petty theft, infidelity, sexual abuse, etc. In her job, Romy is constantly being told how to behave; even her moments of humanity in her videos are strategic disclosures of vulnerability. This extends to her family life. She might be privileged, but she feels powerless. Samuel catalyzes her release. She can’t be perfect, so she wants to be abject.
Babygirl ultimately feels unfinished. The underdevelopment of Samuel is a particular problem; he’s the male equivalent of the young secretary throwing herself at her middle-aged, married boss in Love, Actually (2003), a beautiful plot device rather than a person. I have to wonder if Romy being submissive in her infidelity is actually more acceptable to the viewing public than her being more dominant and the aggressor.
