Nicole Kidman cums. Close-up and from the first image of “Babygirl”, the film for which she received the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice Film Festival last September. Deserved reward, given the performance and audacity of the actress, who has dared, for a good thirty years, what no other star of her rank has allowed herself: to play with her body, to defy all taboos and prohibitions, regardless of age.
In “Babygirl”, although she was 56 years old at the time of filming (she is now 57), she plays the CEO of a large company who sets her sights on an intern in order to subject him to her fantasies and, above all, to achieve an orgasm that her husband no longer gives her – or perhaps has never given her. Labeled an erotic film, “Babygirl” explodes the codes of the genre, because it was not written or directed by a man but by a woman, Halina Reijn, whose point of view on the so-called raw sequences excites the neurons more than the hormones. Hence the confidence placed in the filmmaker by Nicole Kidman, delighted that we thought of her: “Often, women are rejected as sexual figures at a certain moment in their career, she recently declared to the newspaper “Hollywood Postpone”. It was nice to be seen that way. And, when I read the script, I realized that I had never seen a film like that before, that I had never risked it, and neither had the public. » The statement oscillates between false modesty and false modesty, the actress having always exposed herself to situations conducive to qualifying her, if not scandalous, at least wanton.
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson (left), who plays her young lover. On the set of “Babygirl”.
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© Bauer-Griffin
“I am attracted to extraordinary roles, often the most stripped down. If I turn my back on this principle, I become lukewarm, transparent”
In 1995, then considered the wife of Tom Cruise, barely fit to share her husband’s poster, she amazed in “Ready for anything” as a perverse Miss Weather who more than lasciviously seduced Joaquin Phoenix, with the sole aim of convince him to eliminate his spouse. Her performance as a femme fatale earned her a Golden Globe. And then, in 1999, came the famous “Eyes Wide Shut”, by Stanley Kubrick. The trailer, alone, sets the whole world in turmoil: Nicole Kidman, small rimmed glasses and naked as a worm, sways in front of a mirror before Tom Cruise, in the same camera as his companion (but without glasses) , don’t join her to make love. The public will come en masse to have a look, but will quickly realize the difference between a vulgar Just Jaeckin (“Emmanuelle”) and a Stanley Kubrick, more interested in the couple’s autopsy than in their somersaults, concluding nevertheless its sapiosexual thriller by an exchange which gives Kidman the upper hand over Cruise. She: “We have something very important to do as quickly as possible. » Him: “What? » Her: “Kiss. » Generic. In real life, she left him two years later. Curtain.
In 2012, she electrified the Cannes Film Festival with “Paperboy”, and admitted without shame: “We have to face things. I am attracted to unusual roles, and they are often the most stripped down. If I turn my back on this principle, I become lukewarm, transparent. » Made up like a stolen car, she plays one of those women fascinated by imprisoned criminals and, on the menu, gets laid on a washing machine in spin mode, mimes at length and unequivocally a fellatio to excite her alleged lover behind bars, relieves his bladder on an overexcited young journalist (played by Zac Efron). “I’ve had enough of the image of cold beauty that sticks to me,” she declared to “Journal du Dimanche”. She is the complete opposite of what I am. » But who is she really? A Hollywood star managing his famous image both maliciously and obsessively? A natural actress, who confided a year ago to Paris Match: “Many spend their lives looking for what makes them tick. I’ve known it since I was little, it’s in my blood”? Or more simply a fulfilled woman who doesn’t worry about what people will say in favor of private and professional choices in line with the name of her production company, Blossom (“flowering” in French)? All three propositions are correct. This is what makes Nicole Kidman fascinating, cultivating a mystery which, on closer inspection, does not exist.
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in “Babygirl”. According to the actress, the erotic scenes performed with her partner “suggest more than they show”.
© A24
“Don’t do what is expected of you,” his beloved mother, who died last September, told him
We believe she is inaccessible, because she gives few interviews, but when she goes to the beach with her family – with Sunday and Faith, her daughters, and the singer Keith Urban, her husband since 2006 – she puts her towel on the among onlookers, feeling among her own in Australia, where she grew up and has a house near the east coast. We imagine her overprotected in a Californian villa. She actually lives 3,000 kilometers away, on a ranch not far from Nashville, the capital of country music dear to her lover. She may be one of the highest paid actresses and own (with Keith Urban) a real estate portfolio estimated at $282 million, but her feet remain on the ground and her life is tidy, as her parents always instilled in her.
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Her parents… They are the key to Nicole Kidman’s entire life. Not an interview where she doesn’t talk about them and, her father having died in 2014, more particularly about her mother, “an incredibly intelligent woman” who did not mince her words and encouraged her daughters (Kidman has a younger sister, Antonia) to learn from every experience, good and bad. We talk about it in the past tense, because she died in September, in the middle of the Venice Film Festival. Hence the hasty departure of the actress, who will leave it to the director of “Babygirl” to collect her trophy with this message: “I’m in shock, I have to go see my family, but this award is for Janelle [sa maman]. I am beyond grateful to be able to say his name in front of all of you. The collision between life and art is heartbreaking, my heart is broken. »
Broken as he was when she received her Oscar for “The Hours” in 2003, worn out by her divorce from Tom Cruise, two years earlier, which had definitively deprived her of the two children she had adopted with he, Isabella and Connor – Scientologists like their father, they still remain estranged from their mother today. Nicole readily admits to having thought, at that time, of ending her life, trapped in a deep depression. Her parents, her sister, her friends and her fighter character will get her out of this bad situation. Something bad is good: it is from that moment that she becomes the one we know today.
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson caught in flagrant desire in “Babygirl”.
© A24
Surgery, the angry subject
Or that we no longer recognize, some will say, treacherous but relevant. Because as much as we adore Nicole Kidman, we have to address the annoying subject: her face dressed to the nines (at least). In 2011, she told “Cosmopolitan”: “For an actress, facial expressions and emotions are too important. This is why I will never resort to Botox. Drinking lots of water, eating fruit and doing yoga helps me look naturally young. I swear. I also use creams with natural ingredients to make wrinkles less visible. Everyone should try these things rather than going the plastic surgery route which I hate. »
Except that a year later, in the middle of promoting “Paperboy”, she confided having stopped botulinum toxin injections: “I am part of a generation of women who like to “test” things! The good news is that I can move my forehead again! » We forgive everything to someone who makes fun of herself. And it doesn’t matter whether she then had rhinoplasty, breast lipofilling or even hyaluronic acid injections! Let’s put this down to excessive maintenance, incidentally required by agonizing patriarchal diktats prohibiting women from aging.
“Don’t do what is expected of you,” his mother kept telling him. Always try to find other ways to express yourself and move forward. » How proud she must have been, Janelle, that her daughter accepted “Babygirl”, whose title resonates with a strange irony, given that Nicole Kidman assumes her age in it. But not only that… For the erotic scenes, she did not hesitate to send away the now essential intimacy coordinator who told the actress and her partner what they could do or not do. The lady is now big and strong enough to defend herself and enjoy, on screen as in life, being a free, independent and serene woman.
