Babygirl

Or: One Shade of Pink

Fine as it is to watch Nicole Kidman greet the angels (to coin a euphemism) I cannot say that Babygirl was quite my cup of tea. That is to say, I appreciated its message but not its story. From even before the first shot, when we hear Romy (Kidman) mid coitus with her husband Jacob (Antonion Banderas) there’s something off. After satisfying her husband with a perforative climax she sneaks off to get herself off on the floor of her office with the help of some internet professionals. It’s a sad beginning for a high powered executive who supposedly has it all, but it sets a baseline, not a starting point.

Romy, a high-powered CEO, has never had any kind of pleasure from her husband and her work is running her ragged. One day however she is saved from an excitable dog by her as yet unknown intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson) who with superman vision sees into his bosses psyche and the lost kingdom of kinks that lies within. Neither of them really know what to do with the dynamic that arrises, but something tender and true grows between them threatened only by Jacob (who is trying so hard to be everything a supportive, enlightened husband ought to be) and Esme (Sophie Wilde), Romy’s PA who begins to suspect that her boss has a secret as damming as many other men.

I don’t think that writer director Halina Rejin wants us to sympathize with Esme and her “That’s Not Very Women Supporting Women Of You” morality, but I found myself nodding with Wilde’s cool, composed performance because she was the only person I could understand with any regularity. The whole movie was thus sacrificed, apparently weighty moments lost in the hubbub of screen and sound mixture (some nuances came clear: Jacob, a theater director, is busy with a production of Hedda Gabbler, wink wink). I know that Kidman and Banderas have better chops than to be part of the mumble-corps but the movie was so audiotrially jammed it was hard to make out anything. To say nothing of Dickinson’s performance: I’m sure his acting is incredible because he was the most boring romantic lead, skating by on dog-training, confidence and a fitness regimen.

It’s an interesting idea, the new sexual leaps and relationship bounds constructed by today’s youth offering solace to their repressed elders. When Romy stands before Samuel naked and he calls her beautiful you can see wasted years and the deep deep pain as she shakes her head, “No, I’m not.” I was glad she was getting this communpence-free consensual renaissance in her fictional life with Grandmaster Bland, but for my own part, many was the sensual artistic sequence when I doffed my glasses, closed my eyes, laid back in my seat, and thought of England.