The composer David Raksin once described his film music as melodically tricky enough that ideally, he joked, the listener should skip the first hearing and try the second. The same applies, for me at least, to “Babygirl.” The first time I saw “Babygirl” I couldn’t really get the hang or the pitch of it.
Richly complex in terms of tone, it eluded easy categorization, and a lot of it felt uneasy in both right and wrong ways. Yet the richer elements of Dutch writer-director Halina Reijn’s film took hold and went further — all the way there, wherever “there” was for the actors, Nicole Kidman especially. A second viewing revealed more, like most second encounters.
Its examination of one woman’s risky road to sensual fulfillment lands on some good, old-fashioned values, capping a relationship between a formidable robotics-firm CEO, played by Kidman, and her seductive, strategic intern, played by Harris Dickinson. In the broad terms of the BDSM realm, the boss is the submissive to the intern’s dominator. As a table-turning riff on sexual thrillers with a male gaze, and as a portrait of one woman’s sensual fulfillment, it’s pretty compelling.
1:54. 3 stars. A Hollywood love letter to Bob Dylan (played by Timothée Chalamet), with all that implies, “A Complete Unknown” works well on its chosen, extremely glossy terms.
Its craftsmanship is formidable. Then again, you don’t necessarily need quality to sell one of these things, as “Bohemian Rhapsody” .