By Michelle Goldberg
This year has been disastrous for American women — at least for those of us who dread being governed by a group of exaggerated misogynists — but quite fruitful for women in film.
One of 2024’s major successes featured a wrongly criticized woman who channels her fierce anger into a battle against tyranny. (I’m speaking, of course, about “Wicked.”) Demi Moore delivered an over-the-top performance in “The Substance,” a horrifying body horror movie addressing the societal pressure on women to remain youthful. Amy Adams took the lead in Marielle Heller’s supernatural-infused “Nightbitch,” where a woman begins to deteriorate, perhaps literally, amidst the monotony of early motherhood. Mikey Madison shone brightly as a savvy sex worker from a post-Soviet nation in “Anora,” a film that takes the frivolous Cinderella trope of “Pretty Woman” and dissects it.
However, perhaps the most unexpected feminist film of the year is the highly publicized, extremely provocative “Babygirl,” featuring Nicole Kidman, which premieres on December 25. It’s a film that ridicules the girlboss stereotype but ultimately endorses it. On the brink of our daunting new era, it felt, despite its darkness and oddities, like a remnant of a more hopeful time, when equality seemed within reach enough for the orgasm gap between men and women — a recurring topic for the film’s director, Halina Reijn, in interviews — to be a genuinely significant issue.
This wasn’t the impression I anticipated walking into the film, though I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. In a recent feature in The New Yorker, Reijn, a feminist, shared that she grew up idolizing the filmmakers of 1980s and ’90s erotic thrillers like Adrian Lyne, who directed “Fatal Attraction,” a film often compared to “Babygirl.” That movie, focusing on a female stalker with an urgent biological clock, was so reactionary that it plays a central role in a chapter of Susan Faludi’s book “Backlash.” Faludi quoted Lyne saying, regarding feminist professionals, “Sure, you’ve achieved your career and success, but you are not fulfilled as a woman.”
At least on the surface, the concept of “Babygirl” seemed like one Lyne might admire. The film revolves around Kidman’s Romy, a frigid executive with an outwardly perfect existence — high-powered job, loving family, multiple residences — who struggles with her unfulfilled longing to be sexually dominated. It debuts at a time of misogynistic backlash both politically and in certain areas of popular culture. (Anyone familiar with “Backlash” shouldn’t be shocked by the emergence of tradwives.) So despite Reijn’s ideology, I pondered if her film would herald a new, postfeminist era in Hollywood. It does not. If anything, the flaw of “Babygirl” — and here’s where to stop reading if you wish to skip spoilers — is that, despite its psychological tension, it concludes with a message of female empowerment that feels somewhat cliché.
Although marketed as a thriller, “Babygirl” is more accurately a dark comedy about midlife self-discovery. As Reijn mentioned while introducing the film at a recent screening, she was driven by a deeply personal query during its creation: “Is it possible to embrace all the different facets of myself, not just the ones I prefer to show the world?”
Romy is a character who meticulously manages her self-presentation. She heads a robotics firm named Tensile, a highly suggestive title. In bed, she performs pornographic-style fake orgasms for her spouse. An early sequence depicts her pressuring her queer daughter to change out of her oversized clothing for a family holiday photo. We observe Romy undergoing Botox treatments and standing unclothed in a cryotherapy chamber — a welcome acknowledgment, rarely seen in Hollywood, that beauty, particularly after a certain age, can demand its own kind of exhausting effort. While prepping for a corporate presentation, she speaks about the necessity to “look up, smile and never exhibit weakness.” A media consultant corrects her, suggesting that displaying vulnerability can help connect with an audience.
That consultant, however, fails to realize just how vulnerable Romy is, both due to a tumultuous childhood that is vaguely referenced and, more pressing, because of her concealed fetish, which instills her with deep shame. Somehow Samuel, an audacious intern portrayed by Harris Dickinson, perceives this in her. “I think you enjoy being told what to do,” he says during one of their initial encounters. They embark on a tumultuous affair that involves him degrading her, thus fulfilling her in ways her dutiful husband does not. Particularly in a post-#MeToo world, the affair threatens to unravel her pristine existence. There are instances when it appears Samuel, who exhibits some stalker-like tendencies, might attempt to accomplish just that.
Yet Reijn, intending to create a film centered on female sexual emancipation, is resolute in her decision not to punish her characters for their misdeeds. It’s a choice I empathize with, but it does diminish the narrative’s urgency somewhat. Ultimately, the tension in “Babygirl” resides in Romy reconciling her desires and integrating them into her life in a way that doesn’t lead to self-destruction. At one point, a powerful colleague who has somehow unearthed her secret attempts to exploit it for sexual harassment and potentially extortion. “Don’t ever speak to me like that again,” she snaps. “If I wish to be humiliated, I’ll pay someone to do it.” At least in the realm of cinema, women can seemingly have it all.
