In Sigmund Freud’s Madonna-whore complex, some men cannot become aroused by women they perceive as innocent. The Madonna cannot be the disrespected, yet sexually viable, whore. In the modern movie-goer’s Madonna-whore complex, if a female character is not sexual, she is one-dimensional (Madonna). If the female character’s sexuality is overt, she is a male fantasy (whore). This is why many don’t get Halina Reijn’s Babygirl.
Babygirl is Reijn’s fourth film, coming after the campy horror flick Bodies Bodies Bodies. People were expecting a sexy, kinky, age-gap romance from the previews, but what they received was more complex and uncomfortable. The titular Babygirl is tech CEO Romy Mathers, (Nicole Kidman) who has an affair with her intern (Harris Dickinson) that dominates her behind closed doors. It’s easy to dismiss the film as something you’ve seen before — erotica where the twist is that the powerful woman doesn’t want to be powerful in her own bedroom. However, Babygirl isn’t about how women want to be dominated; it’s about how they’re excluded from sexual exploration.
On a symbolic level, the casting is perfect. Kidman rose to prominence in the ’90s, starring in cult classics like Practical Magic and Moulin Rouge!, and winning the Oscar for The Hours in 2002. Throughout her career, she has been revered for her beauty, but now, in her late 50s, she’s been criticized for aging and rumors of plastic surgery. Dickinson had his big break with Triangle of Sadness (2022), in which he played a male model. Hot guy meets aging hot woman.
Dickinson is not the natural dominant partner and Kidman is not the immediately willing submissive. Samuel and Romy meet in a hotel room as their affair begins, and when he tries to initiate their dominant-submissive dynamic, she initially reacts as if the whole act is ridiculous and juvenile. It is not very sexy, but this sex scene is not about sex; it’s about sexual exploration, which is sometimes awkward or silly or embarrassing. There’s no mood music and no nudity. It’s just two people figuring each other out and figuring out what they desire from their relationship.
One of these people is a 20-something guy, and the other is a 50-something woman. Samuel is the typical age for exploring sexual desires, but under modern standards, Romy seems delayed in exploring her sexuality. However, such a delay is very common for Generation X women. Gen-X women were conditioned to believe that the best sexual interests you could have were ones that perfectly aligned with your husband’s. For this generation of women, initiating sex not in the way that the man wants would be seen as stepping out of your role. Some see a woman asking to be dominated and they immediately dismiss it as regressive. While I don’t think it is inherently progressive, I still see a woman asking for anything sexually as a sign of shifting norms.
We are at a cultural crossroads right now. Trump’s 2016 presidency was the catalyst for a mass leftward shift with an emphasis on accepting people of different races, sexualities, genders and so on. Over the past decade, this liberal coalition has been trying to decide if an acceptance-of-all philosophy applies to sexual desires such as BDSM. In contrast, there has more recently been a rightward push to return to traditional sexualities, genders and desires. On the issue of BDSM — one of the more niche categories attacked under general criticism of the atypical — liberals need to decide if they’re going to disagree with anything that the right endorses. As one of those so-called tree-hugging liberals, I’m going to say, man, I think it depends.
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There is scientific evidence that choking causes brain damage, a practice that has become increasingly popular in the sexual encounters of young adults. Sexual strangulation has become so ubiquitous that the issue was poignantly portrayed in the pilot episode of Euphoria in 2019 when Cassie’s boyfriend chokes her without asking and is then surprised that she is uncomfortable. I once heard a 19-year-old woman describe it as vanilla. Is brain damage in the name of pleasing your partner progressive? I really, really, really hope not.
However, is policing peoples’ interests in the privacy of their own homes progressive? No, I wouldn’t say so. And Romy Mathis is into some stuff out of the norm. Telling people that their sexual desires are wrong, even when they’re safe, creates a culture in which the groups historically told to accept the desires of their partners (i.e. women) are going to be left unsatisfied. It’s a culture in which a tech CEO will cheat on her husband, whom she loves, before she expresses her desires to him directly.
It seems to me that Babygirl didn’t click for a lot of people. While I see why, I think it was one of the best films of 2024, and it features a criminally overlooked Nicole Kidman performance. Reijn’s direction isn’t flashy, but the tone she sets is precise, and she got really compelling performances out of both Kidman and Dickinson. The lesson in all of this? You should watch this movie, and you should also talk about sex with your partner. (Sending them this article could be a great segue!). When I left the theater after watching Babygirl, I kept thinking about the fleeting intimacy between Romy and Samuel, who, on a personal level, were never really close. Sometimes it’s easier to be vulnerable with people you don’t really care about than it is to risk the judgment of those who matter to you the most.
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Chloe Asack is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at [email protected].