Published30 August 2024, 21:10
CinemaIn Venice, Nicole Kidman resurrects the erotic thriller
The film “Babygirl” revives a genre that had been shelved following the #MeToo movement. But in the end, it breaks few taboos.
Actress Nicole Kidman walked the Venice Film Festival on Friday as the film in which she stars, ‘Babygirl’, entered competition
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Nicole Kidman made her competitive debut on Friday in Venice with “Babygirl”, an erotic thriller that aims to revive a genre made stale by feminist struggles.
At 57, the actress from “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999) and “Moulin Rouge” (2001), who has never left the screens, exposes herself like rarely before. Few stars of her stature appear, as in one of the film’s erotic scenes, nude on screen, or getting Botox injections.
In “Babygirl”, she plays a New York tech mogul who seems to have it all. The only shadow on this picture of a “strong woman”: her sexual life with her husband, a theater director played by Antonio Banderas, 64 years old: she does not enjoy herself with him and has never dared to talk about it.
She meets a young intern (Harris Dickinson, 28 years old, discovered in “Without Filter”, the 2022 Palme d’Or), with whom she begins an affair that pulls her into a soft BDSM game. This plunges her into a deep existential crisis when she discovers that she loves being dominated. And it jeopardizes her career and home, as the intern threatens to blackmail her.
The film heavily plays on the image of two Hollywood icons: Kidman, the glamorous figure of red carpets, and Banderas, the virile sex-symbol. “It’s a film about desire, pleasure, inner flaws, secrets, marriage, truth, power, and consent,” Nicole Kidman summarized in Venice. “It’s the story of a woman and I hope it is liberating. It’s told by a woman (the director and screenwriter Halina Reijn), and through her female perspective, that’s what makes it so unique for me.”
Not well-known as a director, the filmmaker, selected for the first time in a major festival, is herself a former actress who worked with Paul Verhoeven (in “Black Book”).
“Men or women, we all have a beast within us, a part of good and a part of bad,” explained the director, who aimed to renew the erotic thriller.
The genre had its heyday in the cinema of the 1980s-1990s, from “Basic Instinct” to “Fatal Attraction” to “9 1/2 Weeks”, with most of the time men behind the camera. But it has aged in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
The question of how sex is represented in cinema has become hot, often driven by female directors. Narratives have begun to diversify, with films like “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” by Céline Sciamma exploring desire and the female gaze, as well as filming practices, with the now systematic use of intimacy coordinators in the U.S., including on this film.
Nicole Kidman recounted how working with a female director allowed her to build intimacy, while the filmmaker emphasized the representation of pleasure from a female perspective.
The film flips some patterns regarding male/female relationships and plays on generational gaps, but ultimately breaks few taboos, mainly pushing open doors regarding masturbation or pleasure, without touching the sacred totems of family and marriage in Hollywood. It suffers from a frequently telegraphed script and scenes bordering on a poorly reheated “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
However, “Babygirl” fits into a lineage of festival-selected films that gradually contribute to shifting the standards of cinema.
Last year, the Golden Lion was awarded to “Poor Creatures”, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos but nearly crafted jointly with his actress Emma Stone, who much more openly challenged the constraints of Hollywood modesty while portraying a woman taking control of her pleasure.
The question is at the heart of the remake of the erotic classic “Emmanuelle”, directed by Audrey Diwan, which will open the San Sebastian Festival (Spain) before its release in France on September 25.