In this age of powerful women, go call a heroine Babygirl! It probably took an actress like Nicole Kidman to play the title role in the erotic thriller by Dutch director and screenwriter Hilani Reijn, born in 1975 in Amsterdam. Presented in competition in Venice, Friday August 30, Babygirl explores the troubled sexuality of a powerful woman, Romy, who risks ruining her career by starting a relationship with a young intern at her company, Samuel (Harris Dickinson, revealed in No Filterde Ruben Öslund, Palme d’or en 2022).
Since its screening, this film by a little-known filmmaker – Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), Instinct: The Forbidden Connection (2019), released on VOD – has continued to occupy the field of conversations, as it throws a spanner in the works of post-#metoo cinema, which is somewhat straitjacketed when it comes to sex and consent. On this sensitive issue, productions tend to favor societal films (biopics, dramas about sexual assault, etc.) rather than investing in sulphurous works.
It is this last option that Halina Reijn, also an actress, has chosen, even if the forty-year-old succeeds in placing her story at the heart of current issues, by questioning the logic of domination against which it is necessary to fight – a character of a young black woman (Sophie Wilde) in search of “empowerment” completes the picture. With morality saved, the director now allows herself to let go of the reins of the script!
Balance of power
The film studies the black box of female sexuality and, from the first image, sows doubt. Romy (Nicole Kidman) is in bed with her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas). She is approaching orgasm, and so is he, once he has reached orgasm, they say to each other: ” I love you. “ But Romy may have faked it. Because immediately afterwards, she gets up, rushes into the next room, opens the computer and masturbates in front of an SM video. Her hand over her mouth so as not to wake the whole house.
Everything is under control for Romy, work, body, relationship, and this mother of two teenage girls has always swept this unspeakable part of her sexuality under the rug. In New York, she is the undisputed boss of a robotics company, professing lukewarm speeches all day long about humans in the age of artificial intelligence. But one morning, on her way to work, a vision terrifies her: an unleashed dog creates panic among passers-by, before a young man, whose gaze she meets, intervenes and calms the animal.
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