Babygirl
Synopsis: Middle-aged, married corporate exec has an affair with an intern from her office.
Once upon a time, there was a hot middle-aged woman who wanted to explore her sexuality with a hot young man.
At the same time, there was a hot middle-aged woman who wanted to explore women’s sexuality with hot younger men.
The first scenario is featured in Babygirl. The second scenario is Nicole Kidman’s latest project. She started looking at the older woman-younger man hookups in the rom-com A Family Affair, and now with writer-director Halina Reijn in the film, Babygirl.
I wonder how Nicole talks to her husband, country star, Keith Urban, about her predilection: Keith, I must make movies about women taking back their power and owning their sexuality. And if she needs to tastefully simulate having sex with a 20-something hot guy, she will.
Nic is Romy, a top exec at a NYC company. She’s married to Jacob (Antonio Banderas), a theatre director. They have two daughters, middle-school aged Nora (Vaughan Reilly) and Isabel (Esther McGregor), a high schooler. They all live in a fabulous apartment in the city and spend select weekends at their estate in the burbs. Nicole has an impeccable wardrobe. Of course.
Harris Dickinson is Samuel, who looks about twenty years old. In A Family Affair, Nic was testing the waters with thirty-something Zac Efron as her paramour. But after that, she probably got thinking: No more OLD actors playing my boyfriends!
Anyway, Samuel is in an internship program at Romy’s company. He’s good looking and fit. And he’s not afraid of combining business with pleasure, HR be damned.
Henceforth, the lovers shall be known as Nicole and the Intern…
Heading into work one morning, Nicole sees a big dog lunging at a person walking along the sidewalk in front of her office building. No one knows what to do except a hot young man who commandingly calls the dog over, directs her to sit and be calm. “Good girl,” he says as the doggo’s guardian dashes over and thanks the dog whispering hero. Nicole’s eyes get big as she witnesses the young man’s mastery. In an erotic rush, she realizes that she too wants to be a good girl. For him.
Nicole is really rolling in the clover in Babygirl. She’s got the Intern on one side and Antonio Caliente Banderas on the other. Well, not as in a threesome. Back at her multi-million dollar apartment, Nicole has tender, Latin sex with her doting husband. But she’s not satisfied. After sex, she bounces out of bed, sneaks down the hall and watches porn while she masturbates. See, she wants to be naughty, but she just can’t talk to her husband about her desires.
At work, the week of the dog incident, Nicole’s assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde) ushers the new group of interns into her boss’ office. The Intern is among them. Instead of tossing off a few practiced phrases welcoming them, Nicole just flushes while the interns gawp at her like the movie star she is. The Intern flashes her a cheeky grin. It’s like Eve meeting the serpent, who’s also the forbidden fruit.
Fortunately for Nicole, her division’s holiday party is that week in the company building. The Intern is there, and Nicole makes her move, joining him on a terrace where he is having a cigarette. He’s a bad boy, so no vape pen for him. They share a greeting, and he offers her a pull from his cig. She accepts and he tells her that he’d like her to be his mentor. She demurs but fixes him with a lustful look.
Back at home that night, Antonio blathers on to her about the importance of Hedda Gabbler to theater. Nicole’s eyes glaze over and this is probably when she decides to have an affair. The next day at the office, she clatters through the rooms where the party took place and spies the Intern’s tie. Thankfully no one else is in there so she can fondle his tie. She starts breathing heavily and, after rolling up the tie, she tentatively places it into her mouth. Now to find the tie’s wearer…
Nicole is too hot and bothered to do any work, so instead she haunts the halls looking for the Intern. They end up together in an elevator where he again asks her to mentor him. She says she can spare ten minutes daily. “I graduated cum laude from Yale,” she begins.
You and I both know that the script can’t wait to tell us that this woman is not only beautiful, but also an Ivy League grad at the top of her game. Another necessity is showing how beautiful she is compared to the twenty-something women–like her assistant– who populate the office. The trick is casting average-looking women. Or average looking by Hollywood standards.
Getting thirstier by the day, Nicole needs to see the Intern outside the office. She shows up at a bar where her corporate underlings are socializing after work. Her assistant is there, and they begin talking. Nicole quickly tunes her out as the young woman enthusiastically pours out her ideas for a women employees’ program. Nic is shooting looks at the Intern, who is across the way. He sends over a glass of milk. Locking eyes with him, she downs the drink. This is dangerous! What if she was lactose-intolerant? The Intern brushes past Nicole on the way out and whispers good girl. Naturally, she heads home and masturbates like crazy. Who knows what will be next: the Intern tossing a frisbee for her to catch? Balancing a biscuit on her nose?
The Intern texts Nicole, telling her to meet him at a cheap hotel room. When she gets to the room he’s booked, Nic huffs and puffs at him that she will not be his mentor and he is stepping out of line. She’s really working herself up and finishes with a final lob about how dare he bring her to a dirty room! For this scene, she probably accessed sense memories of when she had to stay at budget accommodations in Australia pre-1990’s.
Before you can say Moulin Rouge! Nicole is ditching her husband’s opening night party for a “work emergency,” which involves tearing off the Intern’s clothes to reveal his discount tatts. After all, he is just a broke ass intern.
Even Nic’s teen daughter is alarmed when mom comes tumbling home in the middle of the night smelling like da club; another place, by the way, in which the Intern and Nicole partially disrobe, pound drinks and get into public foreplay.
What follows is lots of sex in 5-star hotels with the Intern tuned into his mentor’s kink to be dominated. At one point the intern has his mentor crawl on all fours to lap milk out of a saucer. Hmm… maybe her kink is dairy products.
It’s not all dom-sub sex antics. They occasionally speak across the divide between Gen X and Gen Z. Nicole slips into her Aussie accent during pillow talk.
I kept thinking this cannot end well. Maybe Antonio will find out about her cheating? Maybe they will completely lose it and have sex on the conference room table during a board meeting? But how can they resist each other; as we see in a montage scene with Nicole slinking around, eyeing the Intern libidinously as he dances to George Michael’s Father Figure. Ironic song choice. I felt like Harry Styles’ Watermelon Sugar was more on the mark.
Alright, so Nicole’s done the sexually empowered & desirable older woman-younger man thing with a rom-com in LA, and a drama in NYC. I feel like she needs to round things out with a documentary. I wonder what Keith Urban would say if Nic flies off to Bali to meet-up with Jacob Elordi. I don’t know, but I think that Nic owes it to 4th Wave Feminism to make that movie.
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