‘Babygirl’ review: Nicole Kidman takes control

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Nicole Kidman shows her body and soul in the story of a married woman who begins a dominant-submissive affair with a younger man.

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Hello everyone. My name is Halina Reijn and I am the writer and director of “Bathroughgirl”. Therefore, the story of this film is about a woman who turns out to have it all: a lovely family, a glorious husband, and an incredible job. He runs his own robotics company. However, she is attracted to her intern, a very forbidden date: “Oh, there you are. » – who will dominate her sexually. And it’s their first long encounter in a hotel room. And she’s alone there waiting for him. She is fully dressed. And then he arrives in his underwear, wearing a hoodie and a small plastic bag from a warehouse. And the first thing he says is, “Oh, there you are. » So he’s not even inspired that she’s there. “It’s. . . What you’re doing is wrong. ” Of course, it is also a game of strength. This total movie is about strength, control and surrender. And this specific scene has a lot to do with the dynamic of strength between our main characters. And what is very vital to me about this scene is that the scene is a functionality in an aspect of a functionality. The total film is driven by functionality. The entire film revolves around theater. It starts with a fake orgasm. This ends in a genuine orgasm. That’s why we continually ask the public what is genuine and what is fake. And is it imaginable to become our original self? And what does that mean exactly? “I actually don’t know how to do it. What do you need from me? Because you appear here. You don’t know me. I’m a foreigner dressed like this. Do you expect me to look at you and do nothing? For this particular scene, we asked the actors to show that they are acting. “Get on your knees. ” “No, what?” “Get on your knees now. ” “I am, no!” They constantly go in and out of character. And you get to see Harris Dickinson, who plays this young intern. In fact, it informs what masculinity is. Who do I have the right to be as a man at an age of consent? What am I allowed to do? How can I be respectful and at the same time dominate this woman, something he shamelessly asks? “I think I have power over you because I can make one call and you lose everything. ” And yet we see this woman who has so much strength and especially over this intern, but she chooses to be degraded through him. And me, why do I do this? Why do I tell this story? This is because I believe that general freedom and true liberation means that we will have to cling to our inner animal aspect. As soon as we start to take out the beast and say: no, I don’t have a beast, I’m going to get botox. I’m going to sit in ice baths. I will sit in oxygen chambers and do all the treatments I can think of to create the best symbol of my identity, and then everyone will love me. Of course, this is a mistake. “No, I don’t like it. Not like that, not like that, I don’t like it. I don’t need it to be like that. My film is a warning about what happens when you deny having a darker side to yourself. Arrest! Open your eyes please

By Manohla Dargis

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“Babygirl” is not a romantic comedy, not a romance, not even a comedy, although it deals with heartfelt themes and has a quick, rude sense of humor. Set during what turns out to be a very long holiday season, The Film centers on Romy, a pierced Nicole Kidman, a married woman who enters into a dominant-submissive relationship that consumes her to the max. It’s a story about women, bodies, and the regulation of both, and what it means when a woman gives up. his ultimate secret self. All this to say that it is also a question of power, albeit with flaws.

Romy is the CEO of a developing robotics company that, according to her videos, appears to offer warehouse automation. Presumably, robots that move goods will eventually make human hard work redundant; meanwhile, they serve as a well-crafted metaphor for a woman who has rationalized each and every facet of her existence. In her New York apartment, she dresses for some other day of high-end work, but then puts on a crumpled apron as she prepares her children’s lunches with handwritten notes. (The lack of contracted assistance is a prominent detail). The apron is so incongruous with her task and the frictionless perfection of her domestic sphere that her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), asks her about it.

The writer-director Halina Reijn (“Bodies Bodies Bodies”) is just as scrupulously attentive to detail as Romy. With sensitivity to the gilded surfaces of Romy’s life, and with a series of brisk, narratively condensed scenes, the filmmaker sketches in a woman who presents an aspirational ideal, from her glossy lipstick to her teetering heels. Yet while the ceiling-to-floor windows of Romy’s importantly situated office announce that she’s a contemporary woman with nothing to hide, you know better: By the time Romy first breezes into work, you have already watched her sprint naked from her postcoital bed — where Jacob is sleeping the deep, contented sleep of the satiated — so she can secretly masturbate to online pornography.

The beginning of the film is really striking: the first shot of the film is a close-up of Romy probably on the verge of orgasm, and not just because Kidman shows her with apple-like cheeks as her character runs down the hallway. . From the moment the actress’s buttocks and mountainous legs glide into the silent darkness of Romy’s sumptuous, subtle apartment, the film turns out to evoke Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 erotic drama, “Eyes Wide Shut. “In this mind-blowing film, which also opens at Christmas, Kidman plays a married woman who drives her husband (Tom Cruise) crazy after telling him about her unconsummated preference for another man. “I was in a position to give up everything,” he says.

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