Nicole Kidman stars as Romy Mathis, the chief executive of Tensile, a robotics business that pioneered automotive warehouses. In the movie’s opening credits, a maze of conveyor belts and bots shuttle boxes this way and that without a human in sight.

Romy, too, is a little robotic. She intensely presides over the company. Her eyes are glued to her phone. She gets Botox injections, practices corporate-speak presentations (“Look up, smile and never show your weakness”) and maintains a floor-through New York apartment, along with a mansion in the suburbs that she shares with her theater-director husband ( Antonio Banderas ) and two teenage daughters (Esther McGregor and Vaughan Reilly).

But the veneer of control is only that in “Babygirl,” a sometimes campy, frequently entertaining modern update to the erotically charged movies of the 1990s, like “Basic Instinct” and “9 ½ Weeks.” Reijn, the Danish director of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” has critically made her film from a more female point of view, resulting in ever-shifting gender and power dynamics that make “Babygirl” seldom predictable — even if the film is never quite as daring as it seems to thinks it is.

The opening moments of “Babygirl,” which A24 releases Wednesday, are of Kidman in close-up and apparent climax. But moments after she and her husband finish and say “I love you,” she retreats down the hall to writhe on the floor while watching cheap, transgressive internet pornography. The breathy soundtrack, by the composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, heaves and puffs along with the film’s main character.

One day while walking into the office, Romy is taken by a scene on the street. A violent dog gets loose but a young man, with remarkable calmness, calls to the dog and settles it. She seems infatuated. The young man turns out to be Samuel (Harris Dickinson), one of the interns just starting at Tensile. When they meet inside the building, his manner with her is disarmingly frank. Samuel arranges for a brief meeting with Romy, during which he tells her, point blank, “I think you like to be told what to do.” She doesn’t disagree.

Some of the same dynamic seen on the sidewalk, of animalistic urges and submission to them, ensues between Samuel and Romy. A great deal of the pleasure in “Babygirl” comes in watching Kidman, who so indelibly depicted uncompromised female desire in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” again wade into the mysteries of sexual hunger.

“Babygirl,” which Reijn also wrote, is sometimes a bit much. (In one scene, Samuel feeds Romy saucers of milk while George Michael’s “Father Figure” blares.) But its two lead actors are never anything but completely magnetic. Kidman deftly portrays Romy as a woman falling helplessly into an affair; she both knows what she’s doing and doesn’t.

Dickinson exudes a disarming intensity; his chemistry with Kidman, despite their quickly forgotten age gap, is visceral. As their affair evolves, Samuel’s sense of control expands and he begins to threaten a call to HR. That he could destroy her doesn’t necessarily make Romy any less interested in seeing him, though there are some delicious post-#MeToo ironies in their clandestine CEO-intern relationship. Also in the mix is Romy’s executive assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde, also very good), who’s eager for her own promotion.

Where “Babygirl” heads from here, I won’t say. But the movie is less interested in workplace politics than it is in acknowledging authentic desires, even if they’re a little ludicrous. There’s genuine tenderness in their meetings, no matter the games that are played. Late in the film, Samuel describes it as “two children playing.”

As a kind of erotic parable of control, “Babygirl” is also, either fittingly or ironically, shot in the very New York headquarters of its distributor, A24. For a studio that’s sometimes been accused of having a “house style,” here’s a movie that goes one step further by literally moving in.

What about that automation stuff earlier? Well, our collective submission to digital overloads might have been a compelling jumping-off point for the film, but along the way, not every thread gets unraveled in the easily distracted “Babygirl.” Saucers of milk will do that.

“Babygirl,” an A24 release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “strong sexual content, nudity and language.” Running time: 114 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Film

Babygirl
Director: Halina Reijn
2AM, Man Up Films
In Theaters: 12.25

I’m going to take a slight risk here and perhaps shatter the image that so many of my friends and readers have of me as a smoldering volcano of virile manhood. I’m not a widely acknowledged expert on the subject of female sexuality, and as such, I couldn’t quite relate to Babygirl, but I’m pretty sure that’s a big part of the point of it.

The film follows Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman, The Hours), a successful career woman who has seemingly achieved everything: she’s the CEO of a Manhattan robotics company, she’s happily married to a loving husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas, Evita, The Mask of Zorro), and has two teenage daughters, Isabel (Esther McGregor, Bleeding Love, The Room Next Door) and Nora (Vaughan Reilly, The Hunger Games:The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes). There’s an area of Romy’s life that has always been lacking, however: she’s never felt satisfied sexually or been able to explore her need to be submissively dominated, as Jacob refuses to indulge in such sexual behavior. Enter Samuel (Harris Dickinson, Triangle of Sadness, Where The Crawdads Sing), a perceptive young intern who follows a vibe he’s sensing from Romy and starts subtly challenging her boundaries. It’s not long before the electricity between them ignites into a torrid secret relationship, as the controlling Samuel nicknames her “Babygirl” — a name he uses only when she’s met his approval — and Romy, at last, unbridles her long suppressed desires. 

It would be very easy to dismiss Babygirl as another tawdry affair movie, and frankly, if it had been made by a man, it very likely would be. But writer-director Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies) is going for something deeper. This is a sex-positive feminist look at the way society teaches women to approach their “role” in the act of sex, and it’s a story of self discovery. Similar themes were explored in the 2022 Sundance hit Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, which was also directed by a woman, and unless you’re our next Vice President, it’s hard to argue that female filmmakers being supported in telling such stories that lead to open discussion is overdue. It’s also a provocative and intriguing choice to explore more complex and taboo sexual dynamics in a non-judgemental, thoughtful way that just possibly may not have been definitively captured in Fifty Shades of Grey. It may not be comfortable for everyone — it certainly wasn’t for me — and yet, that doesn’t mean it should be dismissed.

Kidman’s fearless performance is spellbinding and impossible to look away from as it is often awkward to watch, and it may nab her a second Oscar. Dickinson, a magnetic and interesting young actor, is quite a presence here, definitely commanding the screen and making his character far more believable than I expected him to be. I must admit that I found myself tangentially distracted by some of the casting: for example, the choice to have Ewan McGregor’s daughter play Kidman’s daughter made my mind jump frequently jump to Moulin Rouge! Whenever I considered that Kidman spent 11 years married to Tom Cruise, I found it easy to buy that submission was her thing, and also that she’d never been properly satisfied, but where the movie lost me was in the casting of Banderas as Jacob. I can remember when 80% of the women and at least 20% of the men I hung out with were instantly brought to orgasm simply by his accent, much less by sharing a bed with him for decades, but I digress. The ensemble is stellar all around, but there’s no question that it’s Kidman’s show all the way through.

Babygirl may fall more into the category of a movie I admired than one I thoroughly enjoyed, yet there’s no denying that it provoked a response, a lot of thinking and some fascinating conversations I’ll eventually have as soon as I find someone I’m not terrified to talk about it with. It’s a bold and penetrating price of art (I regretted the choice of that word even before I typed it), and one of the most daring films I’ve seen in some time. –Patrick Gibbs 

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You really can’t make a traditional biopic anymore. If there’s not something different about your film, audiences just won’t accept it these days. Cradle to the grave just doesn’t work. You either need to zoom in on a specific period in your subject’s life or tackle the genre in a different manner. With Better Man, the story of Robbie Williams has a hell of a hook, one I know most people were not expecting. It sounds bonkers, and it is, but somehow, it works.

Better Man is able to distinguish itself by taking the piss out of how traditional this biopic would otherwise be. Williams is a superstar singer, sure, but the rise, fall, and redemption angle has been done so many times before. What makes it so unique here? Well, if you’re somehow not aware, Williams is depicted at all times as a CGI chimpanzee. No one calls attention to it, ever. To everyone else, it’s just Williams. To us, and to the man himself, it’s a chimp telling his tale. Readers, it livens things up in a way that damn near stunned me.

We meet Robbie Williams (Jonno Davies for motion capture, Williams himself for the voice) as a boy (or as a young chimp) trying to impress his performer father Peter (Steve Pemberton). That will be a through line for his whole life, especially when Peter leaves to seek his own success. Left with his mother and grandmother, he’s not much of a student, but he is a showman. Eventually, that sheer force of personality makes him a part of a boy band that blows up, managed by the dismissive Nigel Martin Smith (Damon Herriman), beginning his rise to stardom.

As he becomes more and more famous, Williams becomes a drunk and drug addict, romances Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno), and gets into all sorts of trouble, all the while having Peter come in and out of his life. It’s all the sort of thing you’d get bored by, if not for the man himself having so much charisma, plus…yeah, he’s a monkey the whole time. In addition, there’s a sneakily emotional ending that works way better than you’re expecting, too.

Having Robbie Williams voice his CGI self while Jonno Davies plays him through motion capture works so much better than you’d expect it to. Truly it does. They combine to never call attention to the gimmick or to their work, instead capturing the cinematic portrait of the man. It’s real strong teamwork. That’s important, too, since the other performances more or less fade into the background. Steve Pemberton is solid, but he’s in and out of the narrative. In addition to Raechelle Banno and Damon Herriman, supporting players here include Tom Budge, Frazer Hadfield, Anthony Hayes, Kate Mulvaney, Alison Steadman, and more.

Director/co-writer Michael Gracey is emboldened by the ape aspect, which puts the film’s tongue firmly in cheek, even when covering all the expected territory. Along with co-writers Oliver Cole and Simon Gleeson, Gracey does the greatest hits, both in terms of the life story and the music. The script is nothing to get too excited about, but Gracey’s direction, which manages to never call extra attention to the chimp, is a highlight. I was not a fan of The Greatest Showman, but Gracey has won me over here. Plus, Williams himself has such personality, that shines through, helping to keep the flick from ever seeming plodding.

Better Man works because it dares to be different in one sense. The biopic aspect is more or less standard issue, but the CGI chimp, alongside Williams’ charisma, is undeniable. Plus, while the original song Forbidden Road is no longer Oscar eligible, it’s a lovely tune at the end. If you’re a Robbie Williams fan, this is a must see. Everyone else? Prepare for something more fun than you might be expecting.

SCORE: ★★★

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