Nicole Kidman acts out two orgasms within the first 10 minutes of Babygirl — one real and one fake, we later learn. The first is with her onscreen husband Antonio Banderas in the bedroom of their glossy New York City high-rise. The second is moments later, down the hallway while she watches a grungy porn video alone in the dark. There are no prizes for guessing which is fake.
The film instantly sets it’s tone. Babygirl is about lust, the complexities of human desire and the tension between how one wants to be perceived versus who they are inside. What is less clear in the film’s opening sequence is what writer-director Halina Reijn’s masterpiece has to say about motherhood.
Kidman plays high-powered tech CEO Romy Mathis who, on paper, has it all: a lucrative career, a doting husband and two daughters. She embarks on a steamy affair with office intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson,) seemingly in a quest to live out her transgressive, taboo sexual fantasy of being controlled in the bedroom (and in the office bathroom, on a fire escape and just about anywhere they can be alone together.)
Much has been written about Kidman’s unflinching performance, Reijn’s judgement-free depiction of female desire, and Dickinson’s careful portrayal of the demanding yet gentle Samuel. And the praise is certainly deserved.
The less obvious plot device to unpack, however, is Kidman’s role as a mom.
This is certainly not a film about motherhood, yet the way Reijn uses Romy’s daughters as part of the fabric that blocks Kidman’s character from showing her true self is devastatingly clever. Romy doesn’t feel seen, not by her husband who tenderly makes love to her most nights, not by her coworkers who only see an assertive, sanitized version of her and certainly not by her teenage daughters who mock her carefully crafted image.
In one scene, Romy serves breakfast for older daughter Isabel (Esther McGregor) and youngest kid Nora (Vaughan Reilly) before work while wearing a floral apron akin to something you’d see on trad-wife TikTok. Her husband questions why she’s wearing the garment while her daughters giggle at the kitchen counter.
In another, while refusing to pose happily for photos in front of the family’s Christmas tree, Isabel tells her mom that she looks like a dead fish and pushes her lips out to mimic Kidman’s pout. Later, Romy stands in front of a mirror scrutinizing her own reflection.
Among the many sex scenes, these moments are some of the film’s most vulnerable and raw. Romy is lonely in all the ways that mothers, wives and corporate executives often are. She has built an identity around appearing powerful and in control, yet it wavers in front of her children who, as teens do, view her as uncool and trying too hard.
Yet, as the film progresses, it’s clear that Romy’s oldest daughter might have a more complex reason for mistreating her mom. Sure, it comes across as callous and cruel, but Isabel might be the only person in Romy’s life, aside from Samuel, who is capable of recognizing that her mother is putting on a facade.
She refuses to fall into the trap her mother set for herself by rolling her eyes when Romy asks her to dress, look or act a certain way. She teaches Romy a lesson about being honest about your desires when she explains why she’s cheating on her girlfriend with a neighbor. “I love Ophelia,” Isabel says. “But, I’m having fun with Mary.” She stays up late one night to make sure her mom comes home safe and tells her, “I’m worried about you.” And when it all falls apart, she comes to her mom’s side and encourages her to repair her marriage.
It is through her daughter’s advice that Romy rebuilds a more authentic version of her life.
Reijn avoids hashing out obvious tropes. Romy’s affair isn’t about seeking validation from a man because she’s not getting it from her family. Reijn also refrains from framing Romy’s sexual desires as a product of her childhood trauma even though we briefly learn Kidman’s character was raised in a cult.
No one is “to blame” for Kidman’s character wanting to be dominated in the bedroom — not her husband, her daughters or her job. Yet those elements that she built her identity around, motherhood, her marriage and her career, do block her from accessing her desires as they do for many.
Before you go, click here to see the steamiest sex scenes between older women and younger men.
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