Babygirl

Babygirl is a film about consent, sex, power, satisfaction, and where those things intersect. It rightly suggests that we can have some, or even all of them, and still come away unsatisfied. While it doesn't offer any answers, the fact that it treats complex and intimate subjects like these with grace and humor is enough – at least for now.

After all, we've had more than enough films about the sex lives of men. Whether they're about how horny we are regardless of our age, or how lonely we can get. I don't mean it as a bad thing, either. It's important that those feelings, just like all others, can be spoken about publicly.

But for decades, that's all we've got in mainstream film. Quick, off the top of your head, what's the last major release you can name that dealt with women's sexuality and desire? Which one featured a woman in her 50s in the leading role? And, finally, which one spoke of unbridled lust and the good old-fashioned desire to have an orgasm with no strings attached?

Can you name one? Because all I can think of is Eyes Wide Shut – and that was 25 years ago. It, too, featured Nicole Kidman, and, not to be outdone, it was about how the man in the relationship felt about the revelation that his wife once, possibly, dreamt of having sex with another man.

Babygirl is unabashedly about women. It begins with Kidman riding her husband (Antonio Banderas) to his satisfaction, and then rushing into another room, where she finishes the job for herself while watching hardcore domination porn. It's a mission statement for what's ahead, and it treats sexuality in a blunt, unglamorous way that feels refreshing in its forthcomingness.

The next day, Kidman meets a young man (Harris Dickinson) on the street, who somehow calms an out-of-control dog with an almost supernatural force. She's instantly drawn to him, though she's conflicted about that lust. After all, it's not what society expects of her. How could a married woman, of her age no less, feel the need for something so carnal with someone half their age?

So when the young man appears at her office to start an internship, it's not long before the duo is drawn to a game of cat and mouse, where it's never quite certain who is doing the chasing.

Their interplay is at the heart of the film, and it's at once sexy, funny, unnerving, off-putting, and tense. It takes a skilled pair of actors to pull that off, and Kidman and Dickinson perform admirably. Kidman, in particular, is brilliant as a conflicted CEO with all the power, yet who wants to be dominated, even as she hates herself for it.

I have reservations about Dickinson as the object of Kidman's fantasies, mostly because he's not my type. It's a silly objection, but in a film all about lust and desire, it needs to be said. I'm sure he's someone's fantasy but, to me, he comes off as a sullen teenager who just got told to clean his room. I don't buy him as someone in power, but maybe that's the point. Perhaps Kidman's character has spent so long with such undemanding sex that even the mildest provocation sparks fireworks.

Elsewhere, Kidman's assistant (Sophie Wilde) wants a promotion. She, like Kidman, is well aware of the glass house they reside in, but she's also got this bucket of stones, and she'll be damned if she's not going to use them. Her and Kidman's chase is an entirely different kind of beast, but no less interesting. It asks how power works between genders, and whether it, too, can be weaponized in a way that skirts on the sexual.

This is why Babygirl is so fascinating. We rarely see these topics explored in films that play on a Friday night at the cinema. We should, and it's a crime that we don't, but here we are. Even baby steps are forward motion. Babygirl is a film that will titillate its target audience, and perhaps others as well, but more than that, it will educate and ignite conversation.

Some of that will be uncomfortable. After all, who wants to hear their partner isn't happy in the bedroom? But here's where Babygirl shines: it proves that conversation doesn't have to be the end of things. We don't need dramatics to be adults. Instead, sometimes just saying what we want is enough. If our partner really listens, they'll understand and, together, we'll find something that works.

For a thriller about the allowed and unwanted abuses of power, it's a remarkably wholesome outcome.