Nicole Kidman’s ‘Babygirl’ is the feel-good film of the year

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

I don’t know if anyone else wants to call Baby girldirected by Dutch actress Halina Reijn, a feel-good film. But, boy, did it make me feel good.

It’s the story of a powerful, married, middle-aged CEO and mother, Rory (Nicole Kidman), who chooses to act out her secret sadomasochistic sexual fantasies with Samuel (Harris Dickenson), a young stud – who happens to be her intern. In other words, our heroine is a bad, bad baby girl. You moralists will be pleased to know that she does not get away with her transgressions. She suffers from deep emotional conflict and the real threat of losing everything she holds dear.

But huzzah! She doesn’t die. In fact, the film ends with an intimate close-up of a satisfied smile, and it’s post-coital, and it’s hers.

This, I think, is a small triumph for modern cinema.

Think of the outcome of other films about women who are bold enough to risk going after what they want, whether it’s in their looks, their sexual desires or their careers. Most recently, The fabricwidely touted as a feminist tale that mocks the debilitating limits of Hollywood beauty culture, kills off its heroine (Demi Moore) in the most gruesome, punishing way. (More of what I have to say about that here.) Or how about the highly respected conductor (Cate Blanchett) in Tar who slowly loses her mind before, for her various misappropriations, she is reduced to conducting a humiliating ragtag orchestra of cosplayers?

As we watch Samuel insinuate himself in increasingly intrusive ways into Rory’s life, it becomes clear that he is a predator, which fits nicely into Rory’s submissive fantasies. The guy is hot and pretty weird, and shows various clues to the potential consequences of his dark sexual power: He wears a gold necklace, for one thing, which makes him look kind of “street” under his corporate suit. More alarmingly, on his ripped flank he has a tattoo of a black-hooded angel who appears to be wielding a rifle (rather than the traditional bow-and-arrow). In various hotel rooms, Rory submits to his demands to stand in the corner facing the wall, get on all fours, slurp milk from a saucer on the floor, which – is it just me? – seems a bit tame in the BDSM world. But for Rory, used to being Bossgirl, it represents a loss of power she finds irresistibly arousing. When things get really steamy between them, the camera is almost always on Rory’s face, portrait-like, so whatever Samuel does to her, the background is blurred. (Acting convincingly like you’re having a volcanic orgasm while there’s a camera focused on your face, I mean, could you do that? I think Kidman deserves an Oscar for those scenes alone.)