Babygirl

The Architecture of Surrender

The erotic thriller has long been a genre of punishment. Historically, when a woman on screen indulged in transgressive desire, the narrative demanded she pay a price—usually her sanity, her family, or her life. But Halina Reijn’s *Babygirl* is not interested in moral retribution. Instead, it offers a sophisticated, jagged examination of the crushing weight of competence. This is not merely a film about an affair; it is a study of a woman who is exhausted by the performance of her own power, seeking a space where she is finally allowed to be powerless.



Reijn’s visual language is deliberate and suffocating. She frames Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman) within the stark geometry of high-end New York architecture—glass walls, steel elevators, and the sterile corridors of the robotics company she runs. The camera often lingers too close, capturing the micro-tensions in Romy’s face as she recites corporate mantras about automation and efficiency. The cinematography emphasizes the disconnect between Romy’s polished exterior—the "Iron Lady" CEO—and the messy, biological reality she suppresses. The film’s sound design is equally invasive, amplifying the ambient noise of a city that never allows for silence, mirroring the internal noise of a woman who has forgotten how to listen to her own body.



The catalyst for Romy’s unraveling is Samuel (Harris Dickinson), an intern who operates with a terrifyingly casual confidence. Their dynamic is the film's electric core, yet it defies the standard predator-prey tropes. Samuel is not seducing Romy to destroy her; he is offering her a terrifying gift: the permission to stop leading. In the widely discussed "milk scene," where Samuel commands Romy to drink a glass of milk in a crowded bar, the thrill is not just in the public humiliation, but in the relief of obedience. For a woman who makes thousands of decisions a day, the command to simply *drink* becomes a form of liberation. Dickinson plays Samuel not as a villain, but as a mirror reflecting Romy’s starved id, while Kidman delivers a performance of shattering vulnerability, peeling back layers of executive armor to reveal a trembling, desperate need for authenticity.



At its heart, *Babygirl* is a tragedy of domestic performance. Romy’s relationship with her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), is tender but theatrically hollow. The film opens with Romy faking an orgasm—a lie of omission that sustains their marriage—and closes with a mirror of that intimacy, now fractured but perhaps more honest. The script brutally exposes the "orgasm gap" not just as a sexual failure, but as a metaphor for the emotional labor women perform to keep male egos intact. Romy’s journey is not about finding a "better" lover, but about destroying the facade that she is a functional, satisfied human being.

Ultimately, *Babygirl* is a confronting piece of cinema because it refuses to pathologize Romy’s desires. It suggests that in a world demanding constant female perfection, the urge to be treated like a "bad dog"—to be primal, messy, and subordinate—is not a sickness, but a rational response to the suffocating architecture of modern success. Reijn has crafted a film that feels less like a scandale and more like a primal scream, muffled by the sound of a closing boardroom door.