I'm Already Sick of Hearing Critics Get Babygirl All Wrong
Surprise! There's no language for a female director's take on female erotica
You might know Babygirl as the kinky new A24 Nicole Kidman vehicle in which Our Lady of AMC plays a “massively successful girlboss” in a power-laden affair with her intern. Critics and the Internet alike are fixated on the part of this movie where Kidman acts like a dog as part of her BDSM relationship, a dynamic that the (admittedly out-of-his-depth) Collider critic claims “exploits and humiliates Kidman more than Lars Von Trier did with Dogville.” Quick note—Kidman’s performance in Dogville is lauded, as are the many other erotic performances of her long career. Babygirl pays homage to several of these, including Eyes Wide Shut and Kidman’s turn in the stage play The Blue Room. Her brief flash of nudity in the latter prompted several reviewers to point out the best seats from which to see Kidman’s ass, which is, obviously, really cringe. My point here is nobody puts baby(girl) in a corner. Kidman is consistently in erotic films because she wants to be.
I disagree with critics who think this role diminishes Kidman just as much as I disagree with The New Yorker’s review of Babygirl, which describes Kidman’s Romy Mathis as “a little robotic” and “intensely” controlling, critiquing the film for its cold precision and lack of emotional depth. Reader, that coldness and lack of depth are the point. Babygirl isn’t a rom-com about a wife who can’t emotionally connect with her husband. It is an erotic thriller about a woman who can’t orgasm with her husband (a brilliantly cast Antonio Banderas), but not because he isn’t sexy, attentive, or attractive. No, Babygirl is a film about a woman who has been conditioned to be aroused by humiliation, risk, and ritual. This is a film about where desires comes from, not whether those desires are “exploitative or humiliating.” More importantly, it is a film that reckons with how we cope with destructive and ungovernable desire.
This is a film about where desires comes from, not whether those desires are “exploitative or humiliating.” More importantly, it is a film that reckons with how we cope with destructive and ungovernable desire.
I think critics have missed this because they have roundly overlooked the thematic weight of Romy’s cult upbringing and its impact on her obsessive pursuit of control. In fact, I have yet to find one review that even mentions Kidman’s character was raised in a cult. This is a glaring omission—repeatedly throughout the film, we see Kidman practicing EMDR as part of a self-optimization routine that includes cryotherapy and Botox injections. Intercut with the rapid eye movements of EMDR, we are shown scenes from the cult in which Romy was raised, which is referenced only once in the film. An intern compliments Romy’s name and asks where it came from, to which Romy replies, “A guru. I was raised in all kinds of cults.” We come to understand her very identity is suffused with what she later refers to as her “awful, awful childhood.” The “robotic” quality of the film that The New Yorker critiques isn’t a misstep on director Halina Reijn’s part but rather a reflection of Romy’s obsessive control over every facet of her life as a survival strategy born of trauma.
Critics’ failure to include this significant thematic element of Babygirl is even more confounding considering Reijn has spoken candidly about her upbringing in a strict religious community with cult-like tendencies, where control and conformity dictated every aspect of life. These experiences deeply inform her work, and in Babygirl, they give weight to Romy’s character. The Telegraph, which dismisses the film as a “21st-century Fatal Attraction,” fails to acknowledge this layered portrayal of a woman whose quest for perfection and automation stems directly from her past. Romy’s affair with her intern Samuel is not merely an erotic subplot; it’s part of her attempt to reduce even intimacy to something safe and controlled. It’s not about power for power’s sake—it’s about reclaiming agency in the only way she knows how.
Critics’ inability to engage with Babygirl’s themes reflects a larger problem in how these stories are received. In 2024, Reijn was one of several female directors from outside the U.S. redefining American cinema. Coralie Fargeat (whose The Substance used sci-fi body horror to critique beauty standards and bodily autonomy) and Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer (which explored female desire in its portrayal of a stepmother-stepson relationship) also delve into the ways trauma, societal expectations, and the relentless pursuit of perfection impact women’s lives. Yet reviews of these films often reduce them to their most shocking elements—sexual tension in Babygirl, gallons of blood in The Substance—ignoring the nuanced critiques at their core.
What makes Babygirl so resonant is how it uses Romy’s personal story to reflect larger truths about trauma and survival. Reijn, with her deeply personal connection to the material, crafts a film that examines the lengths people go to in pursuit of safety, control, and identity. I won’t ruin the ending, but Babygirl is actually a story about a woman who figures out how to navigate the paradox of female desire. Romy Mathis’s journey exposes the ways society demands women suppress their own needs, weaponizing both the allure and punishment of desire to maintain control. Through her affair and personal awakening, Babygirl grapples with how women can reclaim their agency in a world determined to manipulate and judge their desires at every turn. As international directors like Reijn and Fargeat become more mainstream and expand the language of American cinema, I hope critics can figure out how to respond—or, perhaps, that major outlets can stop hiring men too squeamish and women too judgmental to review stories about the complex and largely unsolvable elements of human nature.
Camp rec: Belle de Jour. The quintessential Catherine Deneuve vehicle about a bored housewife who turns to sex work to fill her days. The costumes, the expressions on Deneuve’s face, and the plot itself are totally delicious.
