In the opening scene of Halina Reijn’s delightfully lascivious “Babygirl,” the high-powered shipping industry CEO Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman) is having an orgasm. Or, at least that’s what we think is happening. All the indicators are there: Romy’s face, gasping in pleasure; her head tossed back in ecstasy; the crescendo of her groans as her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), brings himself to climax just below her. But despite this convincing show, Romy is merely faking it, a detail we learn moments later when she scurries off to the privacy of her office. There, she throws herself and her laptop on the floor, touching herself with a flushed haste to the porn playing onscreen.
Reijn states her thesis at the very top of “Babygirl,” showing us the conventional, patriarchal image of a woman’s pleasure when the reality of Romy’s sexual gratification remains somewhere else entirely. For some, this sight will feel revolutionary. To others, it may be achingly on the nose. The diminishment of female sexuality is still a begrudgingly taboo subject, spoken about in hushed tones behind closed doors, but it’s hardly a novel one. And Reijn, who most recently directed the 2022 satirical horror-comedy “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” understands that she’s not breaking new ground by simply reminding us of the dissonance between image and reality. Her film begins at a point that other writer-directors would work up to slowly, and it’s because Reijn establishes this familiar base of social analysis from the jump that she’s able to build a teetering Jenga tower of psychosexual tension throughout the remainder of her character study.
