I found it liberating when I first took a much younger lover – but called the police when he ended up tapping on my window… as Nicole Kidman’s Babygirl hits cinemas, LISA HILTON reveals the double-edge sword of older women’s age-gap affairs

He was an awkward mix of swagger and uncertainty, strikingly handsome with fair hair and gorgeous green eyes. He was also 23 years younger than me.

I wasn’t his boss, but we did meet at a work event – and it was only after we’d been speaking for about half an hour that I realised he was trying to chat me up.

The relationship that began that night lasted six months; and though it was far more significant for him than for me, it also transformed what I thought I knew about myself.

He was a confidence boost and a revelation in the bedroom, but he also shone an uncomfortably revealing light on my character.

I’m horrified by the way older men objectify younger women, yet here I was, doing the same to him – until the balance of power flipped and I began wondering what I’d got myself into.

The idea of an older woman having ‘liberating’ sex with a younger man is something of a hot topic right now. From Anne Hathaway playing an almost 40-year-old single mum who falls for a 24-year-old in The Idea Of You, to Miranda July’s hit novel All Fours (in which a wife experiences a sexual awakening with a youthful paramour), not to mention the fact the fourth Bridget Jones sees her taking a lover 28 years her junior, it feels like the taboo around younger male/older female age gaps is being comprehensively broken.

But it’s Nicole Kidman in the recently released Babygirl that has really set tongues wagging.

Directed by 49-year-old Dutch actress Halina Reijn, the film features Kidman as Romy, whose seemingly perfect marriage and career are disrupted by the thrill – and the threat – of her relationship with a twentysomething intern, Samuel.

At first the power imbalance is obvious. Romy is the hugely successful CEO of a tech company and married to Jacob, a distinguished theatre director (Antonio Banderas). Her life looks like something out of a glossy magazine, from her two glamorous homes to her achingly chic wardrobe.

But Romy has a secret, described by Reijn in an interview as ‘an inner beast she cannot tame’.

Despite an apparently enthusiastic sex life with her husband, she is unable to orgasm with him and instead masturbates in secret to pornography involving bondage and sexual submission. A woman in control of every aspect of her life, Romy fantasises about being dominated.

Enter Samuel, whose irresistible allure arises from his ability to intuit a desire Romy can scarcely admit to herself.

As she finds herself drawn into an affair, Romy hesitates about that power imbalance – and yet, as Samuel reminds her, he could blow up her entire life with a single phone call. Kidman gives a raw, compelling performance which has already garnered her the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival, with rumours of an Oscar swirling.

Critics, however, have been divided as to how erotic this erotic thriller actually is. While some rave that Babygirl is the new Fifty Shades Of Grey, others suggest the supposedly transgressive sex scenes are, in fact, fairly tame. What gives the film its edge, though, is not the level of explicit sex, but the nuanced questions it raises about power. Personally, the film provoked some uncanny and uncomfortable memories of my own experience.

When I met my lover, at a drinks party for food writers, I was in my late 40s and he was in his early 20s.

Frankly, his interest that night astonished me. I had mostly been single for the 11 years since my divorce and thought I’d forgotten how to flirt, but after a few glasses of wine I found myself responding.

Still, when he asked for my number, I assumed he was just being polite. But he called the next day (later he explained that actually phoning someone, rather than messaging, was a huge deal to people his age, a nuance to which I was oblivious), and we met up for dinner.

Like Samuel in Babygirl, he was a mixture of bravado and hesitancy, acting as though it was a foregone conclusion that we would end up in bed, but seeming to expect me to take the lead. I did and it was exhilarating.

After the first night, I really didn’t expect to see him again. It had been fun and made me feel more attractive and carefree than I had in a long time, but I was surprised when his interest continued.

Before long, we were ‘officially’ dating, but I was never entirely relaxed in the relationship.

For a start, I encountered disapproval from friends, who felt the age gap was inappropriate. I appreciated their honesty, but it made me feel self-conscious in social situations.

More than one friend brought up the issue of money. I’m far from being wealthy but, as expected, I did earn more than him.

This wasn’t particularly a problem for me – he was always scrupulous about paying his way and generous within his means – but the suggestion had been planted that he was trying to profit from the imbalance, which made me feel stupid and sleazy, as though he was an opportunistic gigolo and I a middle-aged fool.

Physically, he also made me rather nervous, but not for the reasons you might expect.

I’m in my late 40s, I’ve had a child, and I am, I hope, fairly realistic about my appearance. My body and my face aren’t what they were and I accept that. Moreover, he was always complimentary and his enthusiasm for sex left me in no doubt that he found me desirable.

What troubled me was his looks. He was conspicuously striking –tall, blond, with incredible cheekbones and beautiful eyes, and he turned heads whenever we went out.

I was conflicted about this. Part of me appreciated his genuine beauty, but at the same time I felt in thrall to it, like Romy in the film. I was also aware that I was disregarding personality clashes between us that would have bothered me more had he not been so stunning.

When we were alone, the age gap seemed invisible, but it became glaringly obvious as I tried to integrate him into my life. Our cultural references were entirely different – comic when it came to music or films, less so when it came to privacy.

Like most of his generation he lived much of his life online, and we argued on several occasions when I found him going through my emails. He was unable to understand that I saw this as a gross intrusion of my privacy. His attitude was: ‘why does it matter if you have nothing to hide?’

I also disliked him posting pictures of us on social media, which I don’t use. (He found this very odd, even suspicious.)

When we did have dinner with my friends, I found myself making allowances for him, as though he were a child, and sometimes felt embarrassed when he floundered in conversation.

It wasn’t his fault, but I finally had to admit to myself that I just didn’t really take him seriously. I was objectifying him, patronising him, and I didn’t like myself for it.

Just as I was realising that we had no future, he began pushing for us to move in together.

We had enjoyed some great times, but I certainly didn’t want him in my home or permanently in my life. I had seen our dalliance as a light-hearted adventure whereas he had seen a significant relationship.

It seemed to me he was becoming increasingly invasive and controlling, and I really identified with Romy’s shock and distress when Samuel insinuates his way into her home in the film.

Equally, I felt terrible, guilty and hypocritical, as though I had used him in a way I would have found horrible had the situation been reversed.

I tried to end things kindly, but he became belligerent and aggressive, bombarding me with accusatory texts. One night, I awoke terrified to find him tapping on my bedroom window. Drunk, he had climbed over the garden wall and was demanding I let him in. Instead, I called the police.

It was a hideous way for the relationship to end, and though there was absolutely no excuse for his threatening behaviour, the situation didn’t feel black and white. Much later, I received a final message from him, apologising profusely. At the end, he wrote: ‘All I ever wanted from you was your attention.’ Chilling, but also a reminder that I had treated him dismissively because of his youth and attractiveness.

This is one of the elements of Babygirl I found most fascinating – the flipping of the balance within Romy and Samuel’s relationship.

At one point in the film, Samuel dances shirtless for her, showing off his flawless skin and taut body. We feel Romy’s lust, and his power to play on it, but as viewers it’s also unnerving – do we have the right to ‘perv’ over him in a manner which would be objectionably exploitative if he was a woman?

Samuel is cocky and arrogant, but at times naive and insecure, which is as much a part of his appeal as his confident demand that Romy lap milk on her knees.

It seems surprising that a woman’s relationship with a younger man can in itself be seen as shocking. After all, celebrities and high-profile figures such as Sam Taylor-Johnson, Brigitte Macron and Joan Collins, to name but a few, have far younger partners.

Perhaps the really disquieting aspect of Romy’s character is her urge for destruction, the excitement of risking her job and family. Samuel offers a complete contrast with her daily life, not just in what they do, but where they do it (a series of grubby hotels; an unlikely rave).

Romy is constantly ‘performing perfection’, as wife, mother and woman. One of Babygirl’s most exposing scenes is when we see her getting Botox – one more element of the facade she feels obliged to present.

Kidman’s willingness to strip her own image as a Hollywood star right down to the bone adds force to the sense of reckless rebellion her character achieves with Samuel, intoxicating because it gives the lie to everything Romy is supposed to want.

It’s a feeling of both liberation and self-sabotage I definitely identified with in my own relationship with a younger man, albeit in a much more minor way.

Director Reijn has described her film as being in conversation with blockbuster erotic thrillers of the 1990s such as Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction. But Babygirl asks far more challenging questions about unequal relationships.

Has Romy used Samuel, or is she a victim? More broadly, is it possible for women to recognise and embrace the darkest elements of themselves?

In the film, Romy’s young assistant Esme is aggressively disappointed when her boss fails to live up to her own idea of what a powerful feminist should be, and perhaps that, rather than the sex scenes, is the key to Babygirl’s erotic charge. Sex is potent and liberating but it can also be complicated, even frightening.

As I discovered in my own relationship, desire can sometimes be alarmingly blind.