What if the object (besides the goal) is him? What if we turn around each and every one of the clichés that indeed define us? Babygirl, in slang (don't ask me which one), is used to refer to a twenty-something man with more or less sensitive or directly submissive manners. Or, better, vulnerable, which is now the most used word among those who understand that effective power requires some sophistication and a bit of makeup (you know, the disciplinary power mentioned by Foucault). Babygirl is also the title of the erotic thriller by the Dutch Halina Reijn eager to make a statement.
In reality, it's not that big of a deal. The story of the experienced high executive who gets involved with the supposedly naive intern (babygirl) has a lot of déjà vu. Even if it were with the roles reversed (high executive and intern), the 80s wallowed in this or similar plots. The charm of the movie, in fact, is not its novelty but its originality and rigor in revisiting old arguments and defocusing them. Or making us contemplate them not so much upside down as in their true rawness. Halina Reijn manages to propose a game that is lascivious (or simply voluptuous) without falling into either of the two traps that threatened her: neither repeating the already stale model by adapting it to new ways of speaking without modifying anything essential, nor turning that same model from a female perspective denying the entire past. Let's say that the director of films as interesting as 'Death, death, death' takes the time to discuss, sift through, review, and expand the ideology, as a good student of Paul Verhoeven that she proves to be.
To set the scene, Nicole Kidman offers herself raw as an unsatisfied woman despite her immense power (she is the leader of a colossal, perfectly clean, and excessively ecological company) with a husband brought to life by an increasingly handsome Antonio Banderas. And so on until she discovers the amorous possibilities of one of her assistants. This assistant is none other than Harris Dickinson, the protagonist of The Triangle of Sadness. The director takes the liberty of reversing the dependency game by bringing the film closer to the most dangerous (and also fun) of abysses. She, Kidman, truly enjoys being dominated, and he, Dickinson, assumes his atavistic and very heteropatriarchal dominant role despite his 'submissive' work position. That is, and here lies the paradox, the old model is insisted upon, but from the other side. The woman is the dominated one, but because she has decided so. The reasoning is more elaborate, but the crux and charm of the matter are there: in the raw and happy acceptance of the enemy's discourse without more prejudices than those that burn.
This is in terms of substance. The form is not far behind either. Yes, what is seen is sex; yes, what is seen is the feigned and glamorized sex that we thought had already been eradicated from cinema, but, and here is the interesting part, this time very aware of itself and its fever. The irony lies in that: in making the opposite of what is shown apparent. Everything is true while perfectly knowing it is a lie. Although, in fairness, the lion is not so fierce. More revealing and provocative than the sex itself is the moment when Kidman is shown injecting botox. The truth is that Babygirl is a child of its time, but in the best sense. It is a cheeky and somewhat rebellious child. It is an erotic film that embraces what has been learned after the MeToo movement, but refuses to give up something as primal and entertaining as passion.
It is true that Halina Reijn is daring, but not reckless. If anything can be criticized about the film, it is the multiple safety nets it deploys throughout the script. In fact, the characters verbalize from the theory of consent to the certainty that those supposed poetic and liberating myths like the femme fatale or the masochistic woman are nothing more than creations of (you guessed it) men. And in its didacticism, which is preventive, 'Babygirl' loses strength. Just as the somewhat conciliatory ending that, without revealing which, neutralizes a good part of the bombs placed beforehand, also does not entirely convince. But, despite everything, 'Babygirl' is there for us to talk about it. And very well.
Director: Halina Reijn. Cast: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde, Esther McGregor. Duration: 114 minutes. Nationality: United States.