TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 REVIEW! Writer-director Halina Reijn’s Babygirl is poised to be Gen Z’s Secretary. This sexy and biting romp pokes fun at its audience and, at the same time, makes a compelling statement about the gendered expectations of celebrity culture and the star image. This is the Bodies Bodies Bodies director’s third film, which follows a successful tech CEO, Romy (Nicole Kidman), throughout an affair with her younger intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson). On the surface, this set-up sounds cliché: a forbidden workplace romance paired with muddied erotic power dynamics. However, Reijn’s punchy cinematic style and the clever yet mean-spirited critique of gender and power subvert a trite set-up into a compelling surprise of a movie.
“…a forbidden workplace romance paired with muddied erotic power dynamics.”
Formally, the film is hypnotizing. With its deep bass music, new-age synths, and flashing neon lights the film masters a kind of haptic seduction that continuously draws the audience in as the relationship between boss and intern deepens. This distinct style is rendered visible in the director’s previous work but is more polished and thematically pointed in this third film. The film’s formal play is most evident in a montage of Romy undertaking cosmetic procedures to maintain her beautiful image. We see her receive Botox injections and enter Cryo chambers—a makeover routine made rhythmic and entrancing via editing. Watching these sequences, which feel out of time with the plot but not out of place, I could not help but interpret them in dialogue with Kidman’s star image as an actress who has received increasing scrutiny on her image as she ages.
Babygirl is not only critical of Western beauty standards but extends its contempt to “think piece” type discussions of consent and power, which proliferate Gen Z’s internet. In one instance, Romy and Samuel start to discuss the ethical implications of their rendezvous, however, this too is quickly subsumed into their sexual play of cat and mouse. For Reijn, nothing is off-limits. Reijn is already aware of the criticisms that will and have already been levied on this film, and she’s laughing with cinematic spunk and a robust authorial presence.
Babygirl screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
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