Babygirl by Halina Reijn

What makes Babygirl a stunning film isn’t just its compelling screenplay, the perfect photography or the unbelievable performances by Nicole Kidman—Antonio Banderas, and Harris Dickinson are also great—nor even the themes of power, submission, and desire it explores. The film’s significance lies in how these themes are handled and, crucially, in the fact that it’s directed by a woman who owns her vision—Dutch filmmaker and actress, Halina Reijn.

Babygirl is an erotic/psychological thriller in the tradition of the best 80s and 90s films. However, this time, the genre is chosen to be deconstructed and reassembled from an entirely different perspective. The genre here serves as the battlefield where the director aims to let the female gaze triumph. The film includes elements of perversion, domination, the secrecy of an extramarital affair—between an intern and her boss—psychological manipulation, and the unsettling intrusion of the lover into her family. The tension is constant, and a sense of disaster looms throughout the story. Halina Reijn plays with these elements, leveraging the viewer’s expectations, and in every directorial choice, she deviates from the genre’s usual coordinates. The female awareness and the exploration of what it means to be a woman change the entire mechanism, leading the film to a resolution that is both different and logical—violence, death, phallocentric punishment, and the typical madness of the female character leaves space to confrontation, acceptance, and growth.

This is the story of a woman, a manager and a mother who heads an automation and logistics company. Her life is calculated, rigid, and methodical until she meets a young intern—played brilliantly by Harris Dickinson—who disarms her certainties, starting a consensual relationship of domination and humiliation. Desire and fantasy take over control and reason, and despite the risk of destroying her family and career, she feels compelled to follow her instincts and the pleasure she has long repressed, surrendering completely to this whirlwind. This could have been the premise of an inevitable tragedy, but Halina Reijn’s skill lies in reclaiming the power of female desire, with the ambition, as she comments, to bridge the “Huge Orgasm Gap” between men and women. In her own words, the film’s protagonist wants to “feel free to let go, to express her inner impulses. There’s nothing wrong with that. But not long ago, all of this was considered a pathological disease.”

The film was co-written by Reijn and Dutch screenwriter Esther Gerritsen, marking their first collaboration. Reijn has spoken of her long-standing interest in power dynamics and psychological submission, which she previously explored in her 2019 debut Instinct—a Dutch-language film that also dealt with a woman entangled in a manipulative relationship, starring Carice van Houten. With Babygirl, Reijn makes her English-language debut, and her move into international cinema is supported by a high-profile cast and a production led by A24, marking the company’s first collaboration with Reijn.

The film’s entire conceptual framework, and the contrast between the female and male perspectives, is distilled in the reaction of two colleagues—a man and a woman—upon discovering the secret affair. This is a minor detail and doesn’t spoil anything. The female colleague’s solidarity steers the situation toward a resolution without conflict, while the male colleague’s judgment quickly turns into manipulation, threats, and domination. But fortunately, this is a different kind of film—there’s no room here for such developments or for unwillingly submissive women. This classic erotic thriller trope is dismissed before it can even take root: “I don’t care what you know, get out of my office. If I want to be humiliated by someone, I’ll pay for it.” The awareness not of being wrong or crazy but rather of being in control of oneself, is the key to the entire film.

Babygirl, which received mixed reactions at its Venice premiere, presents a contemporary, female-centric statement that goes beyond current trends in feminist genre revision, and despite the criticism it may receive, stands as a remarkable œuvre. Premiering out of competition at the 81st Venice Film Festival, the film sparked immediate debate for its explicit scenes, bold reversals of genre tropes, and the complexity of its protagonist. It is expected to be released in US theatres later this year, with Nicole Kidman already tipped for possible awards season recognition.