“Babygirl”: The Hypocrisy of Modern Feminism Condensed in (Another) Film
The erotic thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson is one of the most uncomfortable and soporific film experiences in recent memory.
Summary
Romy (Nicole Kidman), the CEO of a big company, puts her career and family on the line when she begins an affair with Samuel, her much younger intern.
Nicole Kidman’s Erotic Adventure
I waited to watch this one because I refused to pay for a ticket. And I was right to do so!
Romy, played by Nicole Kidman, has a successful career as the CEO of a robotic process automation company in New York. I don’t even know why I’m explaining this, because it has almost no relevance to the plot. It could be a shoemaking company, a bank, or a criminal organization, for all we care. The only thing that must be communicated is that she is an empowered girl boss in a corporate world full of evil, sexist men.
The real focus of the story is not Romy’s career but her sex life. She has been married to her husband, a good man who treats her well, for over two decades. But he has never managed to “satisfy” her the way she needs, which she never communicates to him.
In this context, when the grown-ass woman sees a young man handling an aggressive dog in the street, her hormones go wild. The problem is that the youth is an intern at her company. What a coincidence. In a completely predictable turn of events, he will become her lover.
Boring and Uncomfortable
Instead of building tension between the characters, which would be expected from an erotic story, the movie introduced it all of a sudden. Samuel shows up at the company ready to seduce his boss. That means behaving inappropriately around her, with an arrogance and rudeness that is shocking. In real life, an employee like that would not last a day on the job. But as this is a feminine fantasy, common sense does not apply.
Romy is incapable of resisting the sociopathic behavior and starts an affair with him. An affair that, from the first moments, has a dynamic in which Samuel is the dominant person. Later on, the film hints at a backstory about Romy growing up in a cult in an attempt to explain her liking for that kind of dynamic during sex. The whole explanation is very surface-level.
The sex scenes are almost impossible to watch. Though not as explicit as I feared, they are uncomfortable and boring, but above all, they are sooo cringy. There was a very long scene in which the youth dances for Romy that I had to fast-forward because it was way too long. Watching Nicole Kidman make weird faces and awkwardly get on her knees is not my idea of entertainment.
There is nothing natural or artistic in this project, no matter how hard it tries to convince the audience that it’s a deep exploration of women’s sexuality and desires.
What is Nicole Kidman Doing?
Back in December, Kidman received a Golden Globe nomination for his role in Babygirl. Even though awards are not to be trusted nowadays, I was not expecting the performance to be so bad. Leaving aside the fact that the botox barely allows her to change her expression, she spends the entire movie whispering her lines.
A Thriller That Goes Nowhere
If you search Babygirl online, you will find that it is described as an “erotic thriller.” And about an hour into the film, I got prepared for a twist towards the thriller direction. Samuel looks like an unstable person, so I thought maybe he would start to blackmail Romy, get violent with her, or even with her family. That at least would have been interesting.
But no. Even though Samuel threatens Romy to let people at work know about the affair, it never becomes serious. The worst thing he does is find excuses to interact with her family, but even that is pretty tame. I never felt that Romy was in real danger.
Feminist Says vs. Feminist Wants
Last year, I wrote an article about two direct-to-streaming films with a suspiciously similar plot: A Family Affair and The Idea of You, both stories about mature women dating younger men. One of them is also starring Nicole Kidman. She seems to enjoy these jobs a lot.
In that article, I criticize the double standard when it comes to relationships that have a big age difference. Because, let’s be honest, had Babygirl been about a male CEO in his fifties sleeping with a twenty-something female intern, the framing would have been completely different. I also resent how all these films write their mature female characters the same way they would write teenagers. People do not behave like that in real life.
But Babygirl goes even further when it comes to showing how hypocritical feminism actually is. Feminists want to be empowered girl bosses, and they claim to want a man that is “deconstructed” and sensitive. A feminist ally. These kinds of products show their true colors: What they really want is a man that puts them in their place. Otherwise, how would you explain the success of films and books that portrayed men as dominant and even abusive in some cases? Why are women consuming these movies or books if they are against it?
Romy has a husband that loves her, two kids, and a successful career—everything she could want within reason. But that is not enough; she has to throw everything out of the window because she wants to sleep with a young and sociopathic guy. The worst is that the film tries to justify Romy’s bullshit by implying that she “deserves” pleasure. And her husband does not deserve a faithful wife? Would it not have been simpler and healthier to communicate with her husband and tell him what she wants?
She wants to have it all while being held accountable for nothing. Modern feminism in a nutshell.
Progressive Points? Checked!
We are still not completely out of the woke era; the checklist details could not be avoided.
The character has an LGBTQ teenage daughter, who can be immediately identified as such by her looks and attitude. And because the movie makes a point of letting you know she has a girlfriend, even though it is irrelevant to the plot. Aside from being insufferable, this little angel also cheats on her girlfriend and speaks about it with her mother, showing zero remorse. Because being a bad person is modern, I guess.
There is also Romy’s black female secretary, whose talent and drive are overlooked by everyone, because she is black and female, of course. Patriarchy won’t let her succeed! This ray of sunshine ends up discovering Romy’s affair and blackmailing her. A true girls’ girl. But she uses that information for a noble purpose: forcing Romy to create a program that supports women in the company. And getting a raise for herself. What, do you think people are progressive for free?
It’s amazing to me how the people writing and producing these types of products do not seem to understand how deeply unlikable and morally corrupt their characters are.
And the cherry on top, the husband is portrayed as a clueless moron. When he finds his wife and her lover together, the youth tells him that he has “dated ideas about women’s sexuality.” And instead of kicking him out of the house and filing for divorce, the husband has a panic attack and needs to be comforted.
Critical Reception and Box Office Results
As usual, the top critics gave this embarrassment great reviews, while the audience acknowledged the truth.
In spite of that, Babygirl has had a much better theater run than it deserves. With a reported production budget of $20.000.000 according to ScreenRant, the movie has made over $63.000.000 worldwide.
Would I recommend it? Of course not. Not even for a laugh. It is both bad and boring, not worth a ticket. The worst thing is that Babygirl is clearly a TV movie. It’s something I would expect Netflix to produce as filler for its catalog. The fact that it was released in theaters and received praise and recognition from the critics is disgraceful, but not surprising. Let’s not forget that Emilia Perez had 13 Oscar nominations.
The awards will never recover from that shame.
