Babygirl Movie Review: Good News and Bad News for BDSM

As someone happily immersed in a BDSM dynamic for the past ten years, I was thrilled to hear about the release of Nicole Kidman’s “Babygirl,” in which she plays a successful CEO of a tech company who enters a power exchange relationship with a younger man. With such a well-lauded actor in the lead role, I felt certain the movie would steer around the tired trope that those drawn to kinky power dynamics are somehow “sick” because of their desires. My hopes were built up by New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg, who wrote that the movie is about Kidman’s character, Romy, “coming to terms with her desires and integrating them into her life in a way that’s not self-destructive.”

Alas, the movie I saw this week did not portray BDSM as an empowering force for Romy; rather, it turned her into a confused mess who, near the end, told the husband she betrayed that, try as she might, she couldn’t escape her “dark” desires, then cried, “I just want to be normal!” Which I, along with others I know in the BDSM community, found to be a huge disappointment, especially because the movie’s first act had ably set up what seemed to be a fascinating dynamic-in-the-making between Romy and her intern, Samuel (played by a smoldering Harris Dickenson). Indeed, as I watched the first scene in which Samuel finally wins control of a hesitating Romy, and gets her literally eating from his hand before lifting her skirt and giving her an orgasm while she lay face down on the floor, I thought, “Ohhhh, this movie gets it.”

But despite that spark, the story never catches fire, and the portrayal of power exchange tumbles downhill from there, as Samuel continually crosses her boundaries and then all but blackmails her into giving him what he calls “consent” to do whatever he tells her. Romy alternates between seeming thrilled and horrified that Samuel is able to compel her into continuing to cheat on her husband, and to possibly “lose everything,” as Samuel darkly suggests. As she emotionally careens between extremes, one never knows if Romy wants to escape the relationship because she feels guilty for cheating on her husband, or because she is abusing her power as CEO, or because of the age difference she keeps pointing out, or because she is embarrassed by the mildly kinky things Samuel commands her to do. While there is definite heat between the characters — and Kidman’s performance is indeed as fearless as many an impressed reviewer has pointed out — at no time do we feel the catharsis and healing that can be found in sexual surrender as we saw in the genuinely daring 2002 movie, Secretary.

Babygirl is being marketed as an “erotic thriller,” so perhaps Halina Reijn, the movie’s writer-director, felt obligated to turn the dominant Samuel into an antagonist who threatens Romy’s carefully built life with stalkerish behavior. Certainly, her unethical decision to cheat on her husband required her to face consequences. I was relieved that those consequences were not death or the loss of everything that mattered to her, as so often happens to women in movies who dare to act on their sexual longings. We even get something of a happy, if oddly hurried, ending in which Romy is able to finally orgasm at the hands of the husband who decides to embrace her “not normal” desires. Still, the movie’s tepid 52 percent Popcornmeter score on RottenTomatoes is a clear indication that the story was not very satisfying to its audience.

Ultimately, it is good news for BDSM that a major movie, beautifully shot, with an Oscar-winning movie star learning to embrace her kinky side made it to theaters at all. But as an exploration of WHY so many people are drawn to power exchange, the movie failed BDSM, failed the kink-curious, and frustrated the many established kinksters who hunger to see their unique brand of passion portrayed accurately onscreen.