What if Babygirl by Halina Reijn, with Nicole Kidman, was just one 9 and a half weeks much more shy…
In 1986 (yes, already), the sulfurous 9 and a half weeks by Adrian Lyne with Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke explored the complexity of a power relationship intertwined in a sexual and romantic relationship (yes, we could possibly talk about BDSM, but in a very light version and far from the convoluted nonsense of 50 Shades of Grey). Today, in the era of positive sexuality and female gaze (as opposed to male gazethe way men look at women’s bodies) Babygirl smacks of anachronism.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY ENTRACT FILMS
The film opens with a close-up of the face of Romy (Nicole Kidman who has lost even more facial expression since her most recent surgery) enjoying with Jacob, her husband (Antonio Banderas who only appears as an extra). After sex, she will masturbate in her office while watching a porn film. By day, Romy is the boss of a large robotics company, manages hundreds of employees, gives conferences and interviews on leadership, etc. But in his private life, it’s something else. She has what she calls “a dark secret” that keeps her from having fun with her husband of 19 years (seriously?! WTF?). This “secret” is quite simply that she likes to be sexually humiliated… which an intern named Samuel (Harris Dickinson) seems to understand at first glance. Obviously, they begin an affair which becomes “torrid” (note the quotation marks) and which threatens Romy’s professional, marital and family life.
In Venice, where the film, superlatively described as an “erotic thriller,” had its grand premiere, Nicole Kidman spoke of feeling “exposed and vulnerable, but shooting it was very delicate, intimate and very very deep”. The director highlighted the exploration of “feminine desire” as well as “an existential crisis”. Brief, Babygirl was praised as a modern and subversive work in these times of female control over sexuality.
But that’s forgetting recent works. Like the period sex scene in Saltburn by Emerald Fennell, the carnal discoveries of Emma Stone in Poor creaturesself-affirmation in Smile, everything is fine by Zoë Kravitz and quantities of feature films or series (we are thinking in particular of Sex Education and to the character of Gillian Anderson, or to Kristen Bell in Nobody Wants This) who portray women with multiple dimensions, who exist other than in the eyes of men… which Nicole Kidman’s Romy is, unfortunately, incapable of. And it’s forgetting the end of 9 and a half weeks.
And it’s also forgetting that Nicole Kidman had delivered to us in a much more daring way Eyes wide closed in 1999 and in which she, Tom Cruise, her husband at the time, and Stanley Kubrick, explored a couple’s sexuality and infidelity.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Babygirl is presented in cinemas across the province from December 25.
