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Released by: A24
Released on: March 18th, 2025.
Director: Halina Reijn
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde
Year: 2024
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Babygirl – Movie Review:
Babygirl, written and directed by Halina Reijn and released in 2024 by A24, stars Nicole Kidman as Romy Mathis, the CEO of a robotics company in New York City. Despite the fact that, on the surface at least, she has it all, Romy is unhappy with how with her sex life with her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), a theater director, has become so pedestrian over the years.
One day, on the way to work, she is almost mauled by a dog until a young man named Samuel (Harris Dickinson) calms it down. As luck would have it, Samuel is actually an intern at Romy's company and he has picked her as his mentor through program that the company has in place. A short time later, at a meeting, Samuel propositions his boss and while she initially pushes back, it isn't long before she gives in, clearly attracted to the much younger man.
She is, understandably, perplexed about all of this but that doesn't stop her from meeting him in a clandestine hotel room where they have an interesting conversation about the power dynamic in their relationship. They have sex, Samuel clearly the more dominant of the two by this point, telling her they need to setup some rules – “I tell you what to do, and you do it.” But after her intense orgasm, Romy starts to feel very conflicted about everything that's been happening between them. That said, this doesn't stop her from continuing the affair.
Realizing that he has the upper hand in this relationship - after all, it would be quite the scandal if news of Romy's affair were made public - he starts to become more aggressive with her, even being so bold as to show up at her home knowing that Jacob and the rest of her familiar are there. The relationship continues, despite Romy tearing a strip off of Samuel, and he becomes increasingly brazen in his efforts towards her, while at the same time, he starts formally dating her secretary, Esme (Sophie Wilde), who knows about the affair and isn't above blackmailing Romy to advance her own career.
It isn’t subtle foreshadowing when Romy meets Samuel in an event that could have wound up seeing her land in the hospital, or even the morgue. We know from the start that their relationship isn’t going to be a healthy one, and that instinct proves correct when we start to see them indulge in some BDSM style sex-play. While all of this is going on, of course, she has to keep up appearances at work and at home, not wanting to hurt her family or risk losing her career over this, yet unable to stop herself, because Samuel and his dominant side seem to be the only thing that can sexually satisfy her. The movie does an interesting job of exploring this, and at one point, when they discuss their relationship for the first time, Romy clearly thinking she’s the one with the control and clearly interpreting that all wrong.
The performances are really solid across the board. Harris Dickinson delivers an impressive turn as Samuel, a young man unafraid to take full advantage of everything his older boss has to offer and then some. Seeing his acting work alongside Kidman, who is excellent here, is engaging while supporting work from Bandera and Wilde adds further depth to the cast and the characters they portray. Throw in some strong cinematography from Jasper Wolf, excellent art direction and a great score from Cristobal Tapia de Veer and this turns out to be a movie well-worth checking out.
Babygirl – UHD Review:
A24 brings Babygirl to UHD framed at 2.00.1 in an HVEC encoded 2160p transfer with HDR10 and it looks excellent. Shot digitally, the image is obviously spotless, and it shows excellent detail throughout, especially in the close-up scenes, though it isn’t limited in that way as the picture shows off all the detail and texture in background items just as well as it does details in performers faces (you can take in all sorts of background detail, whether we’re at the hotel, the office or Romy’s home). There’s really nice texture here as well and good depth the image. Colors look great and black levels are nice and deep. Skin tones look natural, and the image is free of any obvious compression artifacts or sharpening. All in all, the movie looks great on UHD.
Audio chores are handled by an English language Dolby Atmos mix. English SDH, English Descriptive Audio and Spanish subtitles are all provided. Audio quality is also excellent, with the surround channels used aggressively throughout the movie starting with the use of music and the gun shots at the range early in the film. The soundtrack has really nice range to it and there’s nice, tight bass response throughout the movie, but it never buries the dialogue, which remains clean and clear throughout.
A commentary with writer/director Halina Reijn is the best of the extra features on the disc, going into quite a bit of detail about where the ideas for the story came from, what went into the casting decisions, the complexities involved in shooting certain scenes, working with the cast and crew, the decision making process that went into forming certain scenes, the themes that run throughout the film and lots more.
We also get two featurettes, the first of which is Directing Desire with Reijn, an eleven minutes segment where the director and her cast discuss their work on the film, getting into character and what it was like on set, as well as a nine-minute piece called Power Looks: Dressing The Cast Of Babygirl that offers some insight into what went into the costuming work featured in the movie. The disc also includes eight minutes of Deleted Scenes as well as menus and chapter selection options.
Included inside the packaging along with the disc is a set of six behind the scenes photographs on postcard-sized prints by Niko Tavernise.
Babygirl - The Final Word:
Babygirl is an interesting and sexually charged exploration of human power dynamics by way of an intense production that serves as a great showcase for Kidman’s skills as an actor. The UHD release from A24 is up to the label’s typically high standards, offering up a gorgeous presentation and a decent selection of extra features. Recommended.
