REVIEW: ‘Babygirl’ is Lifetime Channel fodder with a bigger budget

Director Halina Reijn certainly isn’t creating a good track record with me.

In 2024, Reijn followed up her 2022 flick “Bodies Bodies Bodies” with an erotic thriller, “Babygirl.” The movie stars Nicole Kidman as the CEO of a major company that she built herself who has a seemingly good life with a husband (Antonio Banderas) and two kids.

However, she is unsatisfied in her sex life, which has resulted in her marriage becoming stagnant. The movie picks up with her meeting a young man named Samuel (Harris Dickinson), an intern at her company who catches her eye. Eventually, through acts of seduction from Samuel, the two begin an affair.

Halina Reijn’s “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” was a picture I absolutely loathed. Her latest contribution to cinema isn’t much better. The headline to this movie is no joke, “Babygirl” is basically what you’d see in a Lifetime movie, but it has the budget to look slick and feature a cast with recognition from the Academy.

The difference is Lifetime movies are made somewhat tongue-in-cheek, not pretending to be high art. “Babygirl” on the other hand is presented as being this sophisticated examination of power dynamics and sexual repression for women, especially later in life. Unfortunately, the movie’s attempt at exploring any of this meaningfully falls on its face.

The biggest issue with the film is the affair at its core. To be fair, there should be some natural danger at play in the movie. Romy is cheating on her husband, she’s a CEO in a relationship with an intern, plus the age gap between the two. That’s enough to create some tension for its characters to walk a fine line.

However, Reijn pushes things so much to up the ante that she ends up making it feel overly edgy. This is mainly done through Samuel, who is way too antagonistic for this to really work. Full disclosure, the intimate side of Samuel and Romy’s relationship includes some dominant and submissive elements, but the problem is Samuel ends up acting like that a lot outside of the bedroom, too.

He appears so controlling and threatening, even showing up at Romy’s house and talking with her family. It feels unnecessary, as if the dramatics at play weren’t good enough already that they had to add this mischievous layer. Plus, it leads to later moments in the film with Romy and Samuel having a heart-to-heart coming across as inauthentic and ultimately inconsistent.

If Samuel had been portrayed as more of a straightforward young man instead of a character from a “50 Shades of Grey” fanfiction, this probably could have worked better. Instead, Dickinson, who can barely grow a mustache apparently, portrays the guy at a level that’s ridiculous.

On top of all that, for a movie that’s supposed to be about challenging the concept of sexual repression with women, the film makes the activities that Romy and Samuel partake in look more scandalous than the actual affair they’re having.

Again, this is connected to how Samuel is made out to be so bad and edgy, mirroring how he’s the dominant one during their intimate moments. The actual cheating and power dynamics with Romy as a corporate leader should really be where the rubber hits the road, but the film is almost more passive on these than the sexual acts portrayed. It’s not even that provocative, either.

It doesn’t help that the movie kind of just meanders around without a sense of real urgency. It doesn’t really build to all that much, either, other than a laughable confrontation in the closing 15 minutes.  After dragging audiences along for Romy’s journey, the film kind of ends on a whimper as well.

Romy herself doesn’t even have that much character, either. It’s surprising for a protagonist played by a great like Kidman, but Romy just seems consistently one dimensional. It leaves a viewer wanting more from the character as a CEO, as a lover, with a greater sense of what’s going on in her head.

It’s kind of astounding that even “Miller’s Girl,” another erotic thriller from earlier in 2024, seemed to be more compelling and entertaining than this ended up being. That’s despite having more than three times the budget, not to mention Kidman and Banderas doing what they can with the material.

Had the movie gone for a nuanced and mature approach, featuring grounded characters and more of an artistic approach to the sexual elements rather than what seemed like shock value bait, this could have possibly worked. Instead, it plays out like an over-the-top thriller with Reijn trying too hard to make it risqué and edgy.

The whole movie comes off as inauthentic, and honestly, rather smug. As if it deserves points for showing some lewd moments. It doesn’t. Again, a movie being a low end erotic thriller isn’t inherently a problem. But this film takes itself so seriously while having so much material that’s unserious.

It makes the whole effort of making a point about sexual repression for women and having a female character go on this journey to explore a different side of herself feel entirely hollow. The execution just damns the whole thing. 1 out of 5.