"Babygirl", and how to make critics fall in love by marketing an erotic movie as an artsy one

Do you remember when movies used to feel edgy because there was sex in them? Like the 60s. That is Babygirl's appeal.

Romy (Nicole Kidman) is the CEO of her own tech company, has a "happy" family with his husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) and two daughters, as well as a supporting assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde). But, Romy is unable to have an orgasm with her husband, she has this "fantasy" (really a fetish becuase without it she cannot get horny) where she needs to be submitted and told what to do. One day, through an intern program, Romy meets young Samuel (Harris Dickinson), with whom she starts having an affair based on her being dominated, which compromisses her job and her family.

The movie starts hard: music composed by moanings, an upside down sex scene were there is difficult for Romy to express her love to her partner, just to then go in secret to watch a domination porn video while hidding her pleasure. It is amazing. The music introduce you to the theme and tone, the upside down shot shows you that there is something wrong in this sex were she is on top, we can see her actively have a hard time to say to his husband that she loves him (presenting in a single moment their whole relationship throughout the movie) and we understand her fetish. Two simple scenes, almost no dialogue needed and no fancy filming technics more than a handheld camera to show the uncontrolled, passionate and uncalculable nature of pleasure. Sadly, after this, all starts going down.

Well, the interpretations are really solid, with some impressive moments. Dickinson is this mixture of strong and imposing person, at the same time that he can be pathetic. Kidman is this contradiction of a highly powerful woman which likes to be submitted. Wilde plays this lighthearted character who, in the climax, becames a stronger presence and, still looking nervous, comands with authority. The only curious situation is the character of Isabel (played by Esther-Rose McGregor), one of Romy's daughter, who is kind of the same character as her mother that always speak like whispering, being kind of desperating without any need to. Banderas' role is not his most impressive nor charismatic, but it fulfills its purpose entirely.

Now, out of that, everything else is pretty much a shadow of that first sequence. The direction of Halina Reijn is competent, but nothing very remarkable. Most of her directorial proposition is just using a handheld camera and pointing it towards the action. There is not much more to the scenes. The out of focus parts of some shots seems more gratious than planned, and of course there are a lot of shots of "stylized" sex: with the sheets perfectly covering their intimate parts like if they were some classical statues or with a backlight showing their silhouettes hugging in the pool. I mean, this could sound good, but they are just there because half of the scenes in the movie are just sex and some of them had to have something just on stadistics. The way that are filmed does not tell or relate to anything that is happenning, are just cool-sex-shots, that is all you need nowadays to get your film to critical acclaim.

Reijn also struggles to make anything else memorable. The production design, when no reiterative and un-intentionally fake is just bland; it is like they rented and AirBnB and did not even move the furniture. The cinematography is completely forgettable, with sometimes the lighting being more like a corporative advertisement poorly iluminated more than a cinematic experience. The montage, is so boring, does not do anything creative more than paste shots together, one after the other without any intention but to narrate events; the only montage there lacks rythm, visual cohesiveness and even fails to transmit propperly the idea of how the relationship between Romy and Samuel works. The music department is the one that shines the most, with classic 70-80s songs that fit the scenes to make them enjoyable, and the moaning-music is full of personality.

I was surprised that Halina Reijn directed one of my 2022 favorite movies: Bodies Bodies Bodies. But, on a closer look, it makes complete sense. This same generic directing could be found in that comedic movie, including the title card presented in the same attractive and rythmic hit (the only one in the whole picture). Yet, that movie works so well, even with this issues, because of the characters interactions and it is an hour and a half set-up just for a joke, all things that came from the script. Unfortunately, in Babygirl, Reijn is the screenwriter and, holly sh*t, it does affects the final film.

The thing with this is that knowing how to write, even with a screenplay software, does not automatically means you know how to build a scene or structure a narrative. Most of the scens are just repeating the the same story bits, multiple scenes do not affect the character relationships, keeps the story in the same place and are just there to show what we already seen before. Also, many scenes just not lead to anything, for example, when Esme wants to talk about her raise, the scene ends before the conflict is developed, no push and pull between forces, it is just mentioned; and this happens in almost every scene, when Samuel and Romy stablish dominion over each other is not clear who or why, the discussions between Romy and Jacob are just screaming nonsense without development. No scenes have any consequences, characters threat to do things they never do, and there is no sense of anyone doing anything. Everything ends up resolving during an elipsis, because having to write any resolution or even some real drama would just be too cinematic, and for an artsy movie that is unconcievable.

The theme and subjects are actual and intersting. How we sometimes fantasize with what we do not have, the power and manipulation relationships that affects the corporative world, a couple's lack of sexual chemistry, etc. None of this is trully explored, the movie is to focused in showing sex scenes and introducing themes like authomatization, corporative greed and AI (also not well explored and out of the *ss) to actually dedicate time on what it is supposed to have time dedicated to. The cherry on top is the infantiloid and laughable ending where everything resolved by magic outside of camera, nothing had any repercusion and you just have to pretend that what you just saw was something more than just an erotic movie with top tier actrecess.

It is not a deep, complex nor truly artistic movie. Is a mediocre experience that thanks to the studio manages to get amazing interpreters to play in, as well as audiences to show and “love” blindly, this poorly writen and plainly directed piece of audiovisual content. If you are in the theather, is a good movie to come? and see ; )

Soon you will be able to read my review of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 in my personal blog, Once Upon a Time in the Movies: https://onceuponatimethemovies.blogspot.com/