{"id":17483,"date":"2025-03-10T12:53:31","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T12:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=17483"},"modified":"2025-03-10T12:53:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T12:53:31","slug":"who-let-the-dogs-out-a-review-of-babygirl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2025\/03\/10\/who-let-the-dogs-out-a-review-of-babygirl\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Let the Dogs Out? A Review of Babygirl"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you count my two unsuccessful (all cough no high) undergraduate attempts to smoke weed and the later (nominally) more successful fractal bits of gummy I consumed (once) at a wedding reception, you must grant I possessed sufficient knowledge and experience with recreational imbibing to feel I was setting myself up for an evening of hilarity when I decided to get drunk and high (with friends, in case you were staging an intervention) to watch Nicole Kidman\u2019s latest brow-raising toast of Tinseltown,\u00a0Babygirl.<\/em>\u00a0Following an oyster repast and several gin martinis, my desire to witness the infamous milk scene in its original context (I\u2019d seen an endless stream of momfluencers parodying it) became oddly irrepressible and very, very funny.<\/span><\/p>\n

Admittedly, the film and its lengthy press tour\u2014red-hot topics for keen culture-vultures in the run up to Christmas\u2014are slightly old news:\u00a0Babygirl\u00a0<\/em>has been thoroughly ravished, digested, reviewed and psychoanalyzed by critics everywhere, and resultantly a chorus of voices primed a cacophony of conflicting expectations (liberating! brave! fresh! tired! clich\u00e9! smutty! dull! THE PERFORMANCE OF NICOLE\u2019S CAREER!) I was eager to interrogate and settle. I\u2019d read enough about the movie to anticipate a slightly intellectualized\u00a050 Shades of Grey<\/em>\u00a0filtered through a modern, sex-positive female gaze. In this regard, the film delivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, the more you beat me, I will fawn on you: use me but as your spaniel,\u201d cries love-sick Helena in Shakespeare\u2019s\u00a0A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream.\u00a0<\/em>Forgive my mildly drug-addled brain for recalling this text\u2014between severe bouts of giggling\u2014and thinking \u2018ok, so, same-same, but different\u2019 upon encountering Kidman\u2019s icy boss-bitch (woof) Romy Mathis, a powerful CEO who is so unhappy with her beleaguered conjugal sex life that she fakes *every single orgasm* with husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) and self-pleasures to BDSM porn afterwards.<\/p>\n

We are quickly given to understand that Romy\u2014beautiful, successful, and comfortably past age 50\u2014is the deeply depressed prisoner of sexual repression and malaise. Her obvious adoration for her family (laid on rather too thickly by the writers, who *really* need us to understand women can be simultaneously kinky and family-oriented) and work-place chops do not sufficiently off-set the deficit she feels.<\/p>\n

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Enter much-younger corporate intern Samuel, (Harris Dickinson) whose mysterious and increasing erotic appeal (situated squarely in classic dominance) ultimately overwhelms Romy, as the two engage in a very risky and protracted entanglement. Claims about Kidman giving the performance of her career are a somewhat doubtful\u2014between\u00a0Big Little Lies<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0A Family Affair<\/em>, I\u2019ve seen enough of her sighing deeply and speaking in breathy, hyper-feminine tones while gazing moodily toward the horizon. Kidman\u2019s acting in this film is basically her classic haunted shtick, plus long, motel-entrenched orgasms.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the big o\u2014if I withhold praise for this film\u2019s acting, I mustn\u2019t do the same for its valor. Lauding\u00a0Babygirl<\/em>\u00a0for boldness makes sense. It does not merely permit, but celebrates unreserved expressions of female sexual pleasure in an\u00a0ostensibly middle-aged\u00a0<\/em>woman;\u00a0<\/em>the key takeaway for every feminist with eyes and ears.<\/p>\n

After the big 4-0, female representation in tv and film is generally reduced to variations of \u2018matriarch,\u2019 \u2018spinster,\u2019 or \u2018embittered housewife\u2019; it has certainly not been the standard in Hollywood to explore (or even acknowledge) the sprawling erotic realities of women from whom the bloom of youth has departed. The film is self-aware enough to showcase Romy herself facing this pressure and subsequent insecurities\u2014despite her high-powered position\u2014and receiving Botox injections. In a moving, intimate nude scene, she is fragile and unable to accept Samuel\u2019s assertion that she is beautiful. We can and ought to credit writer\/director\/producer Halina Reijn\u2019s vision for liberated, integrated female sexuality defined by the mutual emergence of self-acceptance and at any\/every age.<\/p>\n

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The film attends partially and imperfectly to the psychology of kink, which we experience vicariously in Romy\u2019s need to be told exactly what to do and when to do it, to the tune of the affirmation \u201cgood girl.\u201d This is delivered in low, husky tones by Samuel, whose intuitive understanding of challenging dogs ambiguously imparts an intuitive understanding of Romy in the bedroom. The importance of consent gets a cursory dialogue nod, as does the oft-stymying intersection of power dynamics and danger with human sexuality. A savvy (if reductionist) review I read recently was entitled \u2018She\u2019s His Boss At Work, He\u2019s Her Boss In Bed.\u201d I was hoping for a deeper, more profound dive into the mental landscapes of\u00a0Babygirl<\/em>, but only Romy\u2019s gets serious attention. Samuel\u2019s character verges on lapsing into a one-dimensional tool or supplement to churn up her inner life\u2014even at the end of the movie, we know next to nothing about him.<\/p>\n

For a dark erotic thriller,\u00a0Babygirl<\/em>\u00a0delivers something like a fairytale ending. The explosive discovery of Romy\u2019s trysts with Samuel ultimately serves to usher in a new age of sexual understanding and compatibility between Romy and Jacob, who are happily going at it (in a way that finally fulfills Romy\u2019s needs) at the film\u2019s close. The message is almost disappointingly simple\u2014accept yourself and your desire to make rabid eye-contact whilst downing a very tall glass of milk ordered to the purpose on your behalf in three consecutive gulps..or something.<\/p>\n

I jest, but Romy\u2019s liberation is achieved (too) quickly and (too) decisively; her guilt at being caught red-handed and abusing her professional position along the way all subsumed in new-found erotic contentment.\u00a0Babygirl\u00a0<\/em>asks good questions, but ventures slightly pre-packaged, inadequate answers on the difficult and ever-evolving topics of sexuality, aging-while-female, and the corrosive nature of power.<\/p>\n

The most subversive thread in this film\u2019s tapestry is Romy\u2019s tacit refusal to grovel after an intentional act of enormous selfishness\u2014her illicit liaison with Samuel\u2014paired with the implication that she\u2019s not a bad person\u2014or a bad woman\u2014despite this refusal. Male selfishness is so culturally ingrained and expected it\u2019s become almost acceptable in society\u2014unavoidable, a fact of life we must simply learn to negotiate while we shake our heads resignedly. But the insidious, unforgivable sin of\u00a0female\u00a0<\/em>selfishness (a selfish act committed by a member of the sex universally expected to be demurring and sacrificial) is given a notably fresh turn in\u00a0Babygirl\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>deliberate avoidance of wholesale condemnation. Romy is neither Hester Prynned nor Anna Kareninaed\u2014she retains her status, her relationships and even her composure. What she loses in struggle, conflict and grief is carefully regained in self-acceptance. That\u2019s enough to get a \u2018good girl\u2019 from me, and it\u2019s not just the gin martinis talking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you count my two unsuccessful (all cough no high) undergraduate attempts to smoke weed and the later (nominally) more successful fractal bits of gummy I consumed (once) at a wedding reception, you must grant I possessed sufficient knowledge and experience with recreational imbibing to feel I was setting myself up for an evening of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":17485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,19],"tags":[246,759,760,1387,2104,2535,3290,3392,3961,4005,5477,6248,6613,6614,6927,7807,8500,8922,10080],"class_list":["post-17483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-society-culture","tag-a-midsummer-nights-dream","tag-babygirl","tag-babygirl-review","tag-cassandra-voices-film","tag-culture","tag-dogs","tag-film-review","tag-food","tag-halina-reijn","tag-harris-dickinson","tag-let","tag-momfluencers","tag-nicole-kidman","tag-nicole-kidman-babygirl","tag-out","tag-review","tag-society","tag-the","tag-who"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}