Photo: Niko Tavernise/A24

This article originally appeared after Babygirl Premiere at the Venice Film Festival. We are republishing it to mark Nicole Kidman’s win Volpi Cup for Best Actress.

The most seductive sight Babygirl has to offer is Harris Dickinson, in pleated trousers and shirtless, embracing a robe-clad Nicole Kidman while George Michael’s “Father Figure” blares on the soundtrack. I don’t know if I can do justice to the disorienting appeal of this image. There are many more straightforward sexy moments in writer-director Halina Reijn’s film, about a corporate executive named Romy (Kidman) who begins a BDSM-tinged affair with an intern named Samuel (Dickinson) – moments when the two are so aroused that they fuck in a toilet, or when Samuel orders Romy to take off her beautiful bodycon dress while he watches, or when the camera lingers on Romy’s changing expressions as she falls apart during her first non-solo orgasm. But nothing comes close to the blatant nature of Babygirl‘s eroticism like the shot of Samuel holding his lover tenderly like a child after they have spent many hours together in a hotel room, indulging in lovemaking and games of dominance and submission. It feels amazingly private, two people discovering something about themselves in real time while we have the unique privilege of watching from the other side of the screen.

Babygirl is being touted in some circles as an erotic thriller, although it does not insist on the moral consequences that are traditionally as central to the subgenre as the erotic clinches. Reijn, most recently in the disappointing cool-kid horror comedy body body bodyis a Dutch filmmaker who is essentially on a cultural safari through the remnants of American Puritanism, and the only sexual complexes she explores are those internalized by Romy herself. Babygirl never bothers to seriously address the damage that could be caused by an illicit affair between the company boss and a junior employee. Instead, the film approaches its potentially sordid scenario with giddy enthusiasm. If 2024 has turned out to be the year of cougars in the cinema – Kidman herself has now been paired twice with a leading actor more than twenty years younger – what Babygirl has contributed to this trend is not a story of punishment, but an adventure of self-discovery that is blatantly indulgent but always surprising.

Romy is a manager at the Post –Lean in era, one that wears its hair in curls and its power lightly. “Vulnerability is positive, not negative,” a subordinate tells her when she uses the word “weakness” in an image video, and if Romy doesn’t quite believe that, she still takes note. She has it all – the high-profile job, the loving husband (theater director Jacob, played by Antonio Banderas) and the children (Vaughan Reilly and Esther McGregor as daughters Nora and Isabel). If she is troubled by the contradictions of having to be authoritative and at the same time always accessible, strict and at the same time always gentle, it only becomes apparent when Samuel turns up at the office and ignites something in her that she had previously tried to suppress. What cheers her up at first is, amusingly, the way he takes command of an aggressive dog that has escaped from its owner – his ease, his confidence and the way he says “good girl”. Kidman has been playing overzealous matrons lately, in roles ranging from Big little lies to the upcoming The perfect couple. The joyful thing about her role in this film is that she starts from that point and then drifts off in a different direction so wildly that she seems constantly shocked by herself.

The idea that a person’s needs in the bedroom might differ from their personality and behavior outside the bedroom is not radical, but Babygirl approaches the matter as if the concept is brand new and the lovers find out what they like over time. Dickinson is often portrayed as distant beauties, as objects of desire, rather than as characters who actively pursue what they want, but Babygirl brings him back down to earth. Samuel is old enough to work part-time in a bar and young enough to get an internship at Romy’s warehouse automation company (Babygirl approaches his setting with the endearing vagueness of someone who has read a single Wikipedia entry on New York corporate culture). He’s no Christian Grey, although he already has a better sense of what he wants than Romy does. Their first scenes together are awkward and weird, partly because neither of them knows what they’re doing, but more so because Romy gets carried away by her own desires, but then turns around and acts outraged at what’s happening.

The generational difference between BabygirlLover is not just a provocation – Romy is a product of her time. She had to learn to be one of the boys and then find out what it means to be a leader who is a woman. And in all the scars that these experiences have left on her heart is written the certainty that what she wants is shameful and degrading. Babygirl isn’t quite a love story, and that’s a good thing, even if the film ends on a note that feels a little too neat for the lively mess of everything that comes before. It’s a story of self-love, and part of that discovery is that it’s OK to play small for a while. More than OK—it could turn out to be pretty hot.