Editor’s Note: Vanyaland film editor Nick Johnston is back from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, but our coverage isn’t over yet! Check out our continuing TIFF 2024 coverage, read our official preview, and revisit our complete archives of prior editions.
Like baggy-ass JNCO jeans and Faux-kley shades from street vendors that all the kids are rocking on Depop, eroticism is back in style, folks. Halina Rejin’s excellent Babygirl is another example of this continuing trend, alongside Red Rocket and the rest of Sean Baker’s work, Luca Guadagnino’s explorations of passion, and traditional sex-and-death horror returning to the marketplace through Ti West’s X series. It’s been a long road coming – in case you somehow missed it, the explosion of easy and free pornography online basically destroyed cinematic eroticism. Think of Jack Horner’s complaints in Boogie Nights, but applied wholesale to cinema instead of golden-age smut: Porn may have moved out of the theater and into the living room, but in the three decades years after Dirk Diggler unfurled his business in front of that mirror, it had suddenly become everywhere. Data speeds got faster, wireless connections liberated patrons from their computer rooms, and the smartphone dropped the barrier to entry so low that anyone could see shit that would make their grandparents’ eyes pop out by simply typing a “P” into their browser and clicking the first link (they’d already been there plenty of times, of course).
Given the conditions, Hollywood (and, honestly, most producers, independent or not) reacted as you might expect: The tentpole model ensured they would double down on pictures that could theoretically include the kids or, for the adults, they would attempt to shift the voyeuristic impulse that drove audience interest towards movies resembling classic mondo grindhouse fare — a violent delight harder to find online than smut, much as a Faces of Death VHS was at a chain video store. This was a net negative for culture: the sex comedy disappeared, robbing a generation of a way to poke and prod at sexuality in contemporary ways, and eroticism vanished from other mainstream genres, leaving the finer points to be debated and explored at the margins, much like we did in the Production Code era. Only this time, it wasn’t censorship; it was oversaturation. Yet, somehow, it’s returning to screens, actively influenced by what’s becoming popular online.
Babygirl resembles another movie from the tail-end of the dial-up era, Steven Shainberg’s Secretary, although the formula – workplace relationships and power dynamics explored through the lens of kink – has been shaken up. For instance, our “person-in-charge” role is a subject of perpetual debate. Sure, Romy (Nicole Kidman) is ostensibly the person holding all the cards: she’s the CEO of a successful automation company, simplifying the day-to-day tasks of other business magnates like her who have different concerns to devote their focus to. In short, she lives to serve, but you’d never tell that from how she is with her family – she’s a vaguely distant but empathetic mother to her two teens and a devoted wife to her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), though she is the breadwinner (theater directors don’t make that much staging avant-garde takes on Hedda Gabber). Yet he doesn’t satisfy her in the one aspect that she so desires – she wants to be controlled when they make love – and she’s terrified to tell him so. The roots of her immense shame seem to come from her childhood, where she grew up with hippie parents following crunchy gurus (hence her odd name), where submission was as much of a way of life as it might have been a survival tactic. It’s not explored much; it’s just hinted at, which is more than enough. Anything could prompt the journey she goes on to realize her desire, and she’s deep in the throes of middle age, which makes the timing perfect for a calamity.
Her crisis comes in the form of a young man dressed well but sloppily, his backpack hinting at a kind of school-kid immaturity he should have left in high school five or six years ago. He stops a rampaging dog from running over her on the sidewalks in front of her New York office, taming the beast with a certain amount of gentle care (and a well-placed cookie). Romy puts the strangeness of this event – and the young man’s allure – past her, at least until he shows up an hour or two later in a gaggle of her company’s new interns. He introduces himself as Samuel (Harris Dickinson) and has a kind of aloof charm: he’s handsome but awkward, and their light flirtation is wrong, but to Romy, it feels vaguely seductive. The company has a mentorship program, and she’s bothered when she finds out he’s selected her as his guide – she doesn’t want to be micromanaging an intern’s path through the company, and she especially doesn’t want to be close to him. When their first private meeting ends in a calamitous make-out session, they enter a dynamic that reverses their power: she’s the sub, he’s the dom. Romy’s cognizant that this shit is terrible for her and could blow up every single thing that she’s worked so hard for – her company, her marriage, her relationship with her children – but it turns out that’s exactly what she needs to feel fulfilled.
Rejin’s last film, Bodies Bodies Bodies, was a fun if unremarkable horror-comedy that was undercut by its twisty screenplay, but this time around, she’s the sole credited writer. As a result, she has much more control over the film’s tone, though they share a similar comic sensibility – dialogue-heavy wit that brings out the best in her performers. Kidman, usually cast in a tertiary role in similar films once she became famous, relishes the spotlight, endowing Romy with a sense of depth, allowing the viewer into her perspective as she descends further into her problematic arrangement with Samuel. Likewise, it’s fantastic to see Dickinson return to a role evocative of his debut in Beach Rats, albeit with a different kind of edge. He’s the ultimate brat-tamer in the bedroom but a gentleman (if a manipulative and strangely scheming one) in the streets. Like Romy, we never quite know where he stands ethically, but we don’t succumb to the same ambivalent ague, given that we know their feverish passion will probably end in calamity, with no cure in sight. As he creeps into other aspects of her life, the terror becomes even more appealing even as she’s appalled he has the stones to show up at her vacation home and sit down for a meal with her husband and daughters.
What’s fascinating about Babygirl is how Reijn interprets their relationship and the conflicts that emerge from it. While it’s not necessarily the most psychologically healthy depiction of a D/S relationship, it is one of the more fascinating ones to emerge in recent years, willing to wrestle with the nature of power in ways that aren’t often morally clear-cut. The film’s entire premise is dedicated to exploring a time-tested stereotype — the men and women in charge like to be humiliated and submissive when they step out of their power suits and evening gowns. It’s a stereotype that’s especially pernicious when it comes to women in these roles, an insult tossed at them behind their backs while their employees bitch at happy hour. Many of the best erotic thrillers emerge from a similar impulse to explore these cliches (behind every “busy” husband is a man having affairs his partner doesn’t know about, etc). Reijn’s innovation is how she extends the same care and courtesy that a filmmaker would have given to, say, a Michael Douglas protagonist in the ‘90s. Romy isn’t above criticism and is forced to learn lessons from the consequences of her actions, but as funny as this movie is, she’s never the joke. I guess that’s the essence of maturity that equivalent modern films are missing (though Red Rocket still beats this by a country mile) – Reijn’s film feels whole, unlike The Voyeurs or the eroticism-revival picture of your choice.
If one were to examine sex in cinema as they would a cross-section of a tree trunk, Babygirl would be a faint ring near the outer edge – few things make as much of an impression as, say, The Graduate or Deep Throat or Showgirls, but it is important as an indicator of (what I believe will be) how eroticism will return to Hollywood, and how it won’t be, say, 50 Shades Redux. There are two fundamental yet dueling truths that the internet has revealed. First, more people are straight-up freaky than you’d expect, given anonymous access to things they’d have to go to real sketchy parts of their city to experience or witness for themselves. Second, the form this exposure has taken is drastically ill-equipped to provide anything other than indulgence: 20-minute clips of carnal exploration with helpful time stamps to get you exactly where you’re going. As things continue to get weirder, there’ll be a larger need to examine and probe these impulses through fiction, and the medium is well-suited to tackle it. After all, they are using the same equipment, just different instruction manuals. These films, including Babygirl, come with some manner of taboo-breaking, given that this shit isn’t what you talk about in polite society, but it’ll be worth it in the end just for the self-reflection it’ll provide for audiences.