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 or response, 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, with weirdly comic swerves, 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. Now, this may be familiar territory for you, or it may not be.
“Babygirl” doesn’t care. It’s nonjudgmental in ways some audiences won’t like. But 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.
She and he meet outside the company’s Manhattan office. There’s a small crowd staring in awe at the intern, Samuel, as h.
