'Nicole Kidman's Babygirl feels far too safe for an erotic thriller'

Babygirl is the latest attempt to reignite the passion of the erotic thriller in Hollywood.

There have been a handful of attempts to resurrect the genre — which had its heyday in the 1980s and 90s — in recent years, from Sydney Sweeney-starring The Voyeurs to Saltburn. Genre kingpin Adrian Lyne also had a go with Deep Water, which was a terrible film made notable only for firing the starting pistol on Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas's tabloid-obsessing romance.

There has been more positive attention lavished upon Babygirl, in which Nicole Kidman plays a tech CEO who begins a complex affair with an intern (Harris Dickinson) at her firm. The film has a 77% approval rating among critics on Rotten Tomatoes and Kidman is firmly a contender in the race for Best Actress at the Oscars.

But having now seen the film — written and directed by Halina Reijn — the positivity around it is somewhat baffling. Despite flirting with ideas around BDSM and power dynamics, there's a confounding lack of heat at the heart of Babygirl — a lack of heat that does a disservice to both of its lead actors.

There's very little wrong with Kidman's central performance. In an early scene, her character Romy hops out of the marital bed after sex with her husband (Antonio Banderas) to watch pornography, hoping to achieve the satisfaction there she couldn't achieve in bed. This sequence clearly outlines the core dynamic at the heart of Romy's marriage — a lack of sexual excitement and fulfilment.

That's when she meets Dickinson's Samuel, who sort-of saves her from a dog attack on the streets of New York City by deploying a cookie at just the right time. When he then strolls into her office as a new intern, a gravitational pull drags them together. Unfortunately, this is where the film's problems start. That intense, magnetic connection we're told the characters are feeling never transfers to the audience.

Read more: Shocking ‘Babygirl’ milk scene with Nicole Kidman really happened to director (New York Post, 2 min read)

It's never quite clear what either of the characters are getting from each other and that ambiguity, rather than heightening the sense of passionate mystery, makes the whole thing feel a bit empty. There's no meat on the bones of either character, with Dickinson especially forced to fight the wisps of smoke that pass for Samuel's personality.

That, it has to be said, is no fault of Dickinson — usually a tremendous actor. It's a symptom of a movie determined to make him brooding and mysterious, when actually there needed to be an irresistible sexual charisma and confidence to him. Without that, it never feels like he's giving Kidman the loss of control she seems to crave.

Read more: Babygirl’s Harris Dickinson: ‘Being desired is not something I’ve been particularly used to’ (The Independent, 10 min read)

Babygirl seems reluctant to ever explode with the heat that any good erotic thriller needs at its heart. Its scenes of dominant-submissive play are tentative and strange, with neither party seeming to commit fully to their roles. It's a sexually-charged story in which nobody seems to be getting any sexual charge out of what happens.

The unusual structure of Reijn's movie doesn't help in this respect. There are montages showing passage of time, but there's no progression in the relationship. It takes well over an hour after their "meet-cute" before the two actually have a conversation about the practicalities of their relationship — what each other wants, safe words, etc. The film spends a lot of time spinning its narrative and thematic wheels.

It's all part of how Babygirl, very deliberately, wants to live in the moral and sexual murk of this relationship dynamic. The film attempts to thrive in these two people awkwardly and uncertainly navigating their intense desire for each other, as well as the inherent danger of their affair. But that's all theoretical and is never satisfactorily conveyed on screen.

Romy tearfully tells her husband in a late scene that she needs to feel danger, but it's not clear where she's getting that danger. It never feels likely that Samuel — a decent, if strangely emotionless guy — will detonate a truth bomb and destroy her life. It's too light a movie for that, despite its overly portentous musical score.

Read more: Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson on Babygirl’s same-sex kiss and taking shame out of sexuality (Attitude, 6 min read)

In reality, Babygirl is a lot like the dog that shows up in that early scene. It barks and shows its teeth a little, but never has the intensity to bite. It very much feels like it only needs a cookie and a cuddle — or perhaps a glass of milk — to cool it right down.

Babygirl is in UK cinemas now.