People Just Don’t Get Babygirl (2024)

I loved Babygirl. As a fan of the erotic thriller genre, it was one of my most hotly anticipated films of the year and I knew, like most erotic thrillers, it would be a divisive, controversial film. What I wasn’t expecting was how many people would tell me they were left bored or disappointed by it. Xan Brooks referred to the film as “superficially pleased with itself, so thrilled by its own daring.” I didn’t have the time to watch the film until a few weeks into its UK release, so I was very nervous after hearing both friends and critics slate the film as lacklustre. Was this going to be yet another shoddy attempt at depicting desire on screen? Would it be as mediocre as Fifty Shades? When I finally sat down to watch Babygirl in the cinema, I found myself picking apart every scene, trying to assess what exactly it was that everyone had felt so let down by. While I certainly have my criticisms, Babygirl was, in my opinion, a thoughtful and contemporary meditation on sexual shame, the demanding expectations placed upon women under capitalism, and women’s desire in long-term, heterosexual (and specifically heteronormative) relationships. 

What I found charming about Babygirl was its refusal to eroticise the awkwardness of exploring desire and the dominant-submissive sexual dynamic; this was not a film primarily focused on BDSM or even just sex. Romy, played by Nicole Kidman, and Samuel, played by Harris Dickinson, are vulnerable with each other, “playing with each other like children” to paraphrase Samuel, in ways they have never been able to be vulnerable with other traditional romantic partners. This is the first time either of them has engaged in this dynamic of kink and neither of them is quite sure how to do it ‘right’. As viewers, we know that Romy has seen and understood her submissive desire through porn; she hasn’t ever experienced this in real-life relationships. So, when we see her and Samuel in the first hotel scene, there is a clunky sense of scriptedness and learned dialogue, of children playing mums and dads. Except they aren’t playing mums and dads, they are playing dom and sub, with a script learnt from pornography. Samuel breaks character and laughs awkwardly as he attempts to play this role, only able to engage with it fully when they both submit to their vulnerability. Pleasure only comes when they both relinquish shame and embarrassment, but the film refuses to hide how truly awkward, as well as how playful and comedic, these dynamics can be. 

Babygirl’s depiction of trauma and its relation to sexuality particularly resonated with me. In a few brief scenes, we see Romy undergoing what looks like EMDR therapy, a psychotherapy used primarily to assist in processing and healing from trauma. Later in the film, when she confesses her infidelity to her husband, she explicitly connects her ‘shameful’ sexual fantasies to her childhood trauma. This trauma is never directly explained to viewers, but through the EMDR scenes, it is shown as something Romy grapples with behind the scenes of her busy girlboss, she-EO lifestyle. She perceives it as something she needs to ‘fix’, presumably in the hopes it will also then ‘fix’ her sexuality and leave her with more normative sexual interests. If she was satisfied with traditional heteronormative sexuality in which she just has sex to satisfy her husband, she could, in turn, be free to focus on running her company and being a good mother and wife, rather than feeling preoccupied by her sexual dissatisfaction. In the words of Kristen R. Ghodsee, women have better sex under socialism and this film is distinctly aware of its capitalist conditions. Babygirl recognises how significant sexual satisfaction is in long-term relationships and places emphasis on the importance of women being free to explore their sexualities without shame. Dr Kate Marks put it best, explaining that “Romy’s reluctance to share her fantasies with her husband of 19 years reflects the pervasive shame surrounding kink and erotic exploration… [Babygirl’s] messy depiction of sexual exploration offers a poignant reminder of the courage it takes to confront one’s deepest longings.”

There certainly were things I would change about the film. Samuel’s character lacked depth, only really existing in the film to assist Romy in understanding her sexuality and pushing her to eventually communicate with her husband. The ending seemed rushed, with everything suddenly being resolved a bit too easily and Samuel conveniently getting shipped off to Japan with very little explanation. I would have also liked the film to have gone further in its exploration of AI and how automation and capitalism also feed into Romy’s desire for submission; Romy runs Tensile, an AI shipping company, and scenes of robots are scattered throughout the film. Emma Chang-Kredl’s video essay ‘Babygirl is a film about AI’ explores this idea incredibly, but I would have loved to have seen this further developed in the film itself. 

However, even with these criticisms, I was definitely not left bored by Babygirl. Considering how much I took away from the film, I have to wonder whether it was let down by its marketing, with audience members going in expecting a steamy erotic thriller, with a bit more sex and a bit less milk drinking. Audience members in my cinema were awkwardly squirming and giggling throughout, and I think the authenticity of Babygirl’s representation of sexual desire certainly put a lot of people off. While I understand why this may have left some people disappointed, overall I found it so refreshing to see such a raw, vulnerable, and provocative exploration of female sexuality, which questioned notions of sexual shame and emphasised the importance of satisfying desire. If anything, I’m grateful at the slightly inaccurate marketing this film received, as it opened this conversation up to a wider audience, and hopefully will lead to further discussions on the importance of women prioritising their sexual pleasure.

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