Babygirl
Erotic thriller by Halina Reijn in which a successful female CEO begins an affair with a younger intern. Nicole Kidman won the best actress award at the Venice Film Festival.
Romy is the driven, tightly dressed boss of a New York automation company. At home, she is a devoted wife and mother. The lovemaking with her husband still seems passionate, but is in fact unsatisfying. As a result, she longs for something more exciting. When a handsome intern senses what is on her mind, the pair soon take advantage of the company’s soundproof offices. What initially started as a cat-and-mouse game becomes a fierce sexual relationship with the question of who is in charge of whom.
Babygirl deals with a familiar theme, but screenwriter, director and co-producer Halina Reijn has rightly received international praise for the way she lifts the film above genre conventions. The film contains all the scenes you would expect in a film of this genre – the intern who turns up at the family’s weekend retreat, a colleague who discovers the affair – but Reijn explores the raw, disconcerting reality behind the glamour. (bw)