Babygirl and Life on Autopilot
No one's ever really in control of their own life.
Romy (Nicole Kidman) is the top dog at Amazon-esque e-commerce site striving to lead the charge in automated workflows. As packing bots flow up and down on a rail system, we’re told how important it is for their packing drones to have the same “accountability” as their human workers, and to bring a level of humanity back into the delivery room. Yet you could argue that the SHE-E-O’s home life is anything but human. She barely raises a fuss when her daughters act out, answering emails while barely present at the breakfast table, and ‘performs’ in bed for her dramaturg husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas) before rushing off to really climax to fetish porn – muffling her real desires with a wet hand. Romy – like her company drones – experiences life on-rails, and despite her position of power, doesn’t really know how or when to get off.
And when an untrained dog goes berserk outside her building, setting its sights on her, she seems to face her fate the same way she always does: with a tired and limp acceptance. Except the booming voice of a stranger calls the dog back and Romy locks eyes not with the owner of the animal, an anxious and timid bystander, but the young man who just saved her life. As Samuel (Harris Dickinson) crouches down, offering a treat from his palm and stroking the scruff of dog’s neck, he stares Romy down; looking right into the depths of her flawed soul and saying with eyes alone, ‘you’re welcome.’
A bedevilled spark ignites in Romy after this ordeal, an awkward yearning that only complicates further when Samuel shows up as part of the internship program at the company. Samuel doesn’t shy away from her either, sliding in invasive questions and inappropriate banter, mocking her leadership skills and placing himself exactly where he’s not wanted. But unlike the other arseholes around the office, he may hide behind the guise of a naive intern, but he doesn’t hide his desires from her, and she him.
So, when their play-fighting culminates in a mentorship turned erotic affair between the two of them, it’s up to pair of them to decide the ground rules. That is, if they can figure out who should be in charge of their little situationship.
Modelled after the erotic thrillers of Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, 1992) and Adrian Lynne (Fatal Attraction, 1987), it seems, at first, unfathomable why Kidman’s character would go for a softie like Dickinson when she lays next to suave icon Banderas every night, who himself played a problematic (or in his case, psychotic) bad boy in Pedro Almodovar’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989). But Dickinson somehow gaslights, gatekeeps and (boy)girl bosses his way into the hearts of the audience. In one sense sure of himself, in another incredibly nervous, his performance is a sleight of hand trick that impresses both us and the investors. Not unfamiliar with keeping her Eyes Wide Shut and letting out her inner freak, Kidman is more than willing to scrape hands and knees if it means going toe to toe with her onscreen boy toy.
Yet, for all its bravado and hyper-sexual wantonness, Babygirl is surprisingly more sensitive than its predecessors. Boundaries may be crossed, characters – like Romy’s PA, Esme (understated yet brutally played by fellow Australian Sophie Wilde) – may blackmail their way into the Dragon’s Den, and families may be destroyed, but the film never loses its underlying tenderness. That’s partly due to Samuel’s nature as a character. In Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct and even international endeavour’s like Japanese horror film, Audition (1999), Alex, Cathrine and Asami respectively are psychotic conduit’s for a more existential power; deities of karmic destruction against the men (or a masochistic Michael Douglas), who sleep around, give into their carnal urges and break the rules to regain some of their past youth and glory.
But for Romy, who despite having a position of power in a ‘progressive’ company must, taboo or no, repress her sexuality out of shame, Samuel offers a firm but kind hand in her awakening. “You know what people want and desire.” she says to Samuel after one of their nights out.
For every scene of Romy crawling on her knees, Samuel will hold her, not caress her or kiss her, but just hold her in his arms. He’ll find her in a nightclub and guide her safely out of the mosh pit, he doesn’t just see through her, he sees into her. Jacob may show her love, but he has barely any time to look away from his rehearsal, much less have time to look at her. Even when he sleeps with Romy, their sex, whether he knows it or not, is done for his benefit. So, when Samuel finally does something for Romy, finally sees her for who she is, she can’t help but see him too. “I scare myself sometimes.” he says to Romy. But she already knows. She tells him that his deep care for others outweighs his nastier sexual impulses just as her tenacity outweighs her passivity.
Babygirl, it seems then shares more in common with the likes of Secretary (2002), a more erotic than thrilling romance that sees Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Lee channel her self-harm into something more ‘healthy’, working under a spineless lawyer with a sadism fetish. In both films, what starts off as a problematic distraction from their empty lives, soon produces a sense of purpose for both members in the relationship. For Romy and Lee, Samuel and Grey (unrelated to the Christian Grey of E.L James’ series) become conduits of their inner strength, and surprisingly, their independence.
The film does try to get around the murkiness of the situation – the age-gap, the intern/CEO power dynamic and the corporate corruption – by making both parties just as conflicted and confused as the audience is. When the role-play leaks out into their real lives, neither Samuel or Romy are sure who started it, who’s in control or who’s been manipulating whom. At the very least it’s done with more tact than either Instinct or Attraction, who paint Michael Douglas as a hapless sap who just so happened to hook-up with a cold and calculating psycho bitch. However, when the film implies ending a career with “one phone call” is equally harmful to asking your young intern to do sexual favours for you or you’ll “take care of him,” the writing hits little snags that don’t exactly scream solidarity with the victims of abuse or workplace harassment.
Nevertheless, director Halina Reijn brings back her kinetic and on the pulse filmmaking from Bodies, Bodies, Bodies and gives the erotic thriller a much needed facelift after dire drought of the 2010’s and their (seemingly) 50 Years of Gray studio slop. Supported with a breathy and climactic soundtrack by Cristobal Tapia De Veer, Reijin brings a freak energy that only Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Queer) can currently match. A highlight is back at the nightclub when Romy is looking for Samuel. The audience is treated to a gorgeously rendered, if epilepsy inducing, club experience. Overwhelming and definitely overstimulating, it captures the horrors and beauty of nightlife in one fell swoop – all without ever feeling watered down. So when Samuel and Romy finally grasp for each other in that sea of people, Romy, instead of feeling swallowed up, feels protected.
Babygirl may be a much softer take on the erotic thriller, but that makes its hard edges stick out a whole lot more. It may be inconsiderate at times – largely due to the nature of its genre trappings – but Reijn is undoubtedly more equipped to try and unpack such a complex relationship than her male predecessors ever were.
In the end, it not’s the dolled up fake organisms – the fake nice family men – but the guttural, authentic and primal orgasm, the stone cold bitches, who turn the most heads.