Babygirl

Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson are caught up in a complex web of sexual domination in Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, one of the most welcome entries into the erotic thriller canon in years

Film Review by Anahit Behrooz | 06 Jan 2025
  • Babygirl
Film title: Babygirl
Director: Halina Reijn
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde, Esther-Rose McGregor, Vaughan Reilly
Release date: 10 Jan
Certificate: 18

It could be the new personality test, exactly who you think the titular babygirl of Babygirl will turn out to be. On the one hand, Harris Dickinson’s Samuel is definitely baby – dressed in the crisp shirt and eager tie of the grad scheme intern, big blue eyes wide. On the other hand, Nicole Kidman’s girlboss CEO Romy is, well, girl, but crucially also baby – big blue eyes also wide and craving the kind of thrilling sexual domination that she doesn’t get from her loving husband.

This ambiguity of control lies at the heart of Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, a film less interested in piously exposing power hierarchies than in gleefully tangling them into one impossible snarl. In this world of constantly entrapping binaries – younger and older, man and woman, employer and employee, dom and sub – determining exactly who has the upper hand over whom is a fool’s errand. Is it Samuel, who can make Romy do whatever he tells her? Is it Romy, who wants him to? Is it Samuel, who can make her lose her job? Is it Romy, who can make him lose his?

Audacious, sexy and deliciously smart, Babygirl is one of the most welcome entries into the erotic thriller canon in years; a film that understands that desire and transgression are frequent bedfellows, that there can be no sex without power. As Romy and Samuel circle each other with fumbling, delirious eagerness, it becomes clear: when it comes to sex and its concomitant vulnerability, we are all – at some point – the babygirl.


Released 10 Jan by Entertainment Film; certificate 18