There’s a scene in A24’s upcoming Babygirl where Samuel, played by Harris Dickinson, sends over a glass of milk to Romy, played by Nicole Kidman, from across the room. She chugs down the entire glass. “Good girl,” he then whispers in her ear. To Halina Reijn, the film’s writer and director, it’s the most arousing scene in the movie – and that says a lot for a project that packs so many sex scenes into 1 hour and 54 minutes that Kidman had to pause filming because she “didn’t want to orgasm anymore”. But Babygirl isn’t your classic erotic thriller, and that isn’t even the only scene that involves milk as foreplay. Yes, the plot follows Romy, a high-powered CEO of a robotic company, through a torrid affair with a much younger intern, but it’s not even about the affair itself. “It’s a dare to ask for what she wants and needs,” says Reijn. “It’s much more about getting into an affair with yourself because then you’re thinking of your body as a sensual thing instead of it being a war zone.”
Despite Reijn already receiving praise for subverting the male gaze and delivering a feminist take on the genre, she doesn’t claim to be showcasing the “female gaze”: it’s her gaze. An exploration of her embarrassment, insecurities, ‘darkness’ and desires. “It’s to say, we’re living under a patriarchy, and these are the tools that we get to play with,” she says. The film also continues her long-held fascination with creating complex female characters. “I just love to create women characters that are not angels,” she says. “I want to create Macbeth.” You won’t find any cliche girlboss empowerment here – even when you’re actively rooting for Romy, she makes continuous efforts to corrupt and destroy herself and the white-picket fence around her. Even Reijn admits the entire story wouldn’t have happened if Romy sat down with her husband Antonio, played by Antonio Banderas, and said ‘I have to tell you something’ or ‘Here’s what I’d like to experiment with’. Only often, and especially for women, confronting the reality of our deepest sexual desires doesn’t feel that simple. “He would have been so open to it, but she doesn’t do it,” says Reijn. “So this movie is me telling myself not to suppress the beast because the beast will become a monster.”
Frankly, I’m pleased Romy never had that prior conversation with Antonio because it made for the most stirring holiday film I’ve ever seen. For the quietly freaky among us, Babygirl is this year’s BDSM Barbie movie. Ahead of the release – Christmas day in the US and on 10 January 2025 in the UK – we spoke with Reijn about giving herself (and other women) permission to ‘be feral’.
What made you want to write and direct an erotic thriller?
Halina Reijn: I was a stage actress before this, doing all sorts of mythical roles in Shakespeare and O’Neill. My first role was Ophelia in Hamlet. In all of these plays, these female roles are subjected to power, sexuality, control and surrender. Of course, it’s all very much through the male gaze, and all these women I was playing were always trying to liberate themselves. Most of them end up dead, either by suicide or they’re beheaded, like in Mary Stuart, so I always wanted to create stories myself about the same themes because I really love those themes, and they fascinated me. With this, I really wanted to ask the question if it’s possible to become your authentic self without wanting to be normal? I always wanted to be normal and don’t think I belong. I think everyone feels that way. I always wanted the white-picket fence, dog, children and husband – and I have none of that.
Aside from these plays, what else inspired you?
Halina Reijn: The thrillers of the 90s and early 2000s were very important to me in this context because they made me feel seen. I always felt so isolated in my darkness as a woman. They gave me a feeling that it was OK to have these darker thoughts and fantasies, but then the third act of these movies was always incredibly sexist. Then, it was boring to me because people got killed, and people were punished. We then suddenly lost what I thought in the first two acts was always incredibly human to me: the beast inside of us. I thought it would be amazing to take that concept and play with these cliches, have fun with these tripes and archetypes, be really playful with them, show them, and then go in another direction. I’m showing the male gaze and toying with the audience’s expectations of it going into a certain path, but then make it my own gaze. Then, this is how I think it should end, which is always about ambiguity, nuance and complexity.
I really liked the ending because it felt like a woman can get the same forgiveness as many men. Without giving away too many spoilers, why did you want it to have a hopeful ending?
Halina Reijn: I think for women or anyone who is not a white, straight man, it’s important to tell ourselves to celebrate joy and the parts of us that haven’t been able to come into the light because we were barely surviving and we’re happy that we got the right to vote literally a very short time ago. We forget even to explore all the different sides of us. So I wanted to create a movie with (literally and figuratively speaking) a happy ending because I thought that would say it’s OK to become your authentic self. A happy ending isn’t that the bad guy was killed, and the good guy survives. It’s more: ‘Life is ambiguous, and there’s a duality inside of us; let’s shine a light on it, and then we can feel more connected’.
With this, I really wanted to ask the question if it’s possible to become your authentic self without wanting to be normal? I always wanted to be normal and don’t think I belong. I think everyone feels that way. I always wanted the white picket fence, dog, children, and husband – and I have none of that.
The dom and sub-element in the film contrasts with Romy’s day-to-day ‘girl boss’ office life. Why did you want to use BDSM specifically to explore gendered power dynamics and desire?
Halina Reijn: Once I decided to make a story about surrender, control, power and consent in a very modern way, I wanted to do it in a way where it was a comedy of manners, a fable. I didn’t want to make a social drama; I wanted this to be like an Oscar Wilde play, playing with everybody’s expectations of what gender dynamics should look like. Like everyone has, I have all these childhood wounds, and I grew up in communes, but I think BDSM for a lot of people can be healing, even though that’s incredibly controversial to say. You can play with consent and equality in hopefully an extremely safe space. So I thought, what better fertile ground to really talk about these issues than to use the workplace in which there is a hierarchy and, on paper, she is the one in power?
It sounds like this movie also served as a conversation with and reminder to yourself. What were you telling you?
Halina Reijn: I’m so ashamed of myself, and I’m so embarrassed about all these things inside me, like sexual desire. I’m also embarrassed about the rage that I sometimes feel. And, even though we’re all feminists now and everything is amazing, it’s just not true: the hidden inequalities are insane. If we say, ‘We’re all woke now, and we don’t have to talk about that anymore because we’re equal,’ I think that’s very dangerous because my movie is a cautionary tale about what happens if you suppress a certain side of yourself. I don’t think it makes sense to tell stories where we only show a cartoon of what a strong, equal and liberated woman looks like. It’s important to show our confusion and be honest with each other. It’s our turn to look at the other layers in ourselves that men have been doing this for as long as Western democracy exists. They have been exploring themselves, asking, who am I as a thief? Who am I as an angel? Who am I as a truck driver? We didn’t have the chance to shine a light on all the complexity of being human.
The sex scenes felt real and were sometimes awkward. In your view, what makes sex on screen feel real?
Halina Reijn: Personally, I don’t want to look at bodies banging against each other. It’s not what I think is sensual or interesting. Sexuality is very much in the mind. I wanted to have sex scenes that are real and human, and if you’re going to explore the world of BDSM, it can feel incredibly performative in the beginning. You don’t believe yourself – you’re ashamed and think it’s laughable. We all have access to everything right now with our little phones, so we can all bring awareness to anything. So to actually say ‘get on your knees’, is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard of. I just wanted to show people how flawed we all are and how clumsy and sweet everything is when trying to be intimate together.
And there’s a also huge difference between sex with her husband Jacob, which is more performative, and with Samuel, which she gets to live out her fantasies.
Halina Reijn: In a way, it’s all about performance. It opens with a performative orgasm and ends (hopefully) with a real orgasm. As a woman, you have to perform all these different roles in life. You have to be the perfect mother, the perfect daughter, the perfect leader, the perfect wife, the perfect lover. You totally forget to be your authentic self. It’s OK to be feral; it’s OK to be. We don’t all have to look or smell like a Barbie doll. When we look in the mirror, we look at ourselves through the blueprint, which is a straight white male, and we forget ourselves. But how would I look at myself if all of that would be gone? What would I wear? How would I behave? I don’t even know.
As a woman, you have to perform all these different roles in life. You have to be the perfect mother, the perfect daughter, the perfect leader, the perfect wife, the perfect lover. You totally forget to be your authentic self. It’s OK to be feral; it’s OK to be.
It’s funny you mention Barbie dolls because, as I walked out of the theatre, I heard someone say that for them, this was their Barbie movie. What do you think about that?
Halina Reijn: I love that. I also love Barbie – not the doll – because I think anybody who tries to create something that young girls and old women can be inspired by is amazing. Especially in Hollywood, which is still completely ruled by men. This movie is saying just be who you are as an ageing woman. We are all conditioned to think that we must look and be fertile. As long as we’re fertile, we have value, and then we can be chosen by the men. We need to liberate ourselves.
There’s obviously an age-gap relationship in the film, and I think we’re only just starting to see MILF visibility in film. Why do you think this is important to explore?
Halina Reijn: Because all movies that we have ever seen have been the other way around. If you saw a movie in the 90s with a guy and the woman was as old as him, you would think there would be something wrong. The guy is older, and the woman is younger, so the fact that there is something now the other way around is still rare. That should be completely normal. In my movie, it’s a power dynamic that’s not right. It’s morally wrong in the corporate environment, and she should not do that. We do this purposefully, but an age gap where the woman is older should be normalised. It’s not to be seen as an exception.
I know the US release is Christmas Day. Why did you want to tie this into being a holiday movie?
Halina Reijn: It’s for all the other people who don’t want to take their families but need a little bit of everything.
Babygirl is out in US cinemas on December 25 and in UK cinemas on January 10.
