In Stanley Kubrick's erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut, Nicole Kidman's character Alice tells her husband William (Tom Cruise) about a sexual fantasy she has involving a man she saw while the two were on vacation. This sends William on the spiraling journey we see in that film.
In her latest film, Babygirl, however writer-director Halina Reijn wanted to flip the script. She asked herself, as told to EW, "'What if [Alice] would've gone and actually would've lived her fantasy?' That's what this is — my answer, playfully and humbly, to the male Eyes Wide Shut."
So, basically: Babygirl is Eyes Wide Shut fan fiction told through a feminist lens? Okay, well, consider me even more on board with this film than I was before (which was already a lot, for the record—Hollywood needs to finance more horny films made by and for women).
In the celebrated 1999 film, "we follow Tom Cruise everywhere," Reijn explained. "We don't even know what [Alice is] going through. We're totally in his mind, heart, and soul."
"All of us women are ready and hungry to see and hear stories about how we feel and from our perspective," she added, in one of the more truer statements we've read in a minute.
The director also took inspiration from another woman who blows her life up in the pursuit of what she wants: Hedda Gabler, the Henrik Ibsen play that Antonio Banderas' character, Jacob, is directing in Babygirl.
The multi-hyphenate Reijn (who has also acted in several productions across Europe) decided to use the play as a foil for Kidman's character, Romy, and also to rebuff what it implies about pursuing your own liberation as a woman (spoiler alert: Hedda Gabler kills herself at the end of the play).
"I was very frustrated as a stage actress that all the characters I played who are looking for freedom end up dead," she said. "I was so fed up with that. We want to see a woman who liberates herself and actually continues living."
To which we can only say: whew! Preach!
"In the end, it's about a woman who destroys her life to be reborn. [Babygirl] is my version of Hedda Gabler," Reijn explained. "Romy thinks she's trapped in a marriage. But in the end, she's just trapped in herself—[just like] Hedda Gabler."
Ultimately, Reijn "wanted this to be a movie where the specific sexuality that they share is a metaphor for any sexual fantasy that anybody may have. The moment we feel our own hunger, our own desire, we immediately feel shame. We need to liberate ourselves."
Needless to say, when women liberate their sexuality, everybody wins. So consider us seated for Babygirl when it hits theaters on (this very horny) Christmas Day—just like a good girl would be.
