I’ve been seeing variations on the question above on comment boards and social media, and the answer is inevitably a resounding “No. Fucking. Way.” But let’s be clear about what the question really is, since it’s actually two questions at once. The fundamental thing that’s being asked is: Could “Babygirl,” an enthralling high-kink corporate drama, in which Nicole Kidman plays a girlboss who secretly yearns to be dominated and debased, and plays this all out with one of her young male interns…could a male director have gotten away with making that movie today? The answer everyone seems to agree on, with an underlying note of look-how-far-we’ve-come cultural pride, is no. I don’t necessarily disagree — though actually, in a way, I sort of do.
“Babygirl,” written and directed by the volcanically talented Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn, is a gripping movie about a woman who liberates herself by giving into transgressive desires — desires we might once have categorized as politically or sexually incorrect, and that we would now call…what? Would we say, “She gets turned on by doing stuff that’s super not woke?” No, we wouldn’t say that, because it would sound absurd. But the point is that “Babygirl” is a film about someone who feels, and believes, that her deepest desires are wrong.
It’s important to recognize what a common sensation that is. There’s an old saying that goes, “Sex isn’t good unless it’s dirty,” and I think what that expresses is that it’s intrinsic to the nature of human sexuality that people are drawn, in the erotic arena, to acting out things that feel “naughty” or “bad” or whatever. It’s whatever floats your boat. That’s why we have movies like “Basic Instinct” or “9½ Weeks” or “Last Tango in Paris” or “In the Realm of the Senses” or “Bound” or “The Piano Teacher” or “Unfaithful” — movies that allow us to play out, in a collective ritual (or, at least, it used to feel that way in a theater), the tingly lure of forbidden sexuality. And it’s why we have porn, which Kidman’s character in “Babygirl” is addicted to. That’s the realm where her libidinous imagination can roam free.
Kidman’s character, Romy, is trapped in a gilded and proper upper-class domestic existence, with a husband, played by Antonio Banderas, who loves and supports her, and two daughters she’s devoted to. But that’s part of her prison. It’s the life she has built and the life she wants; she has no reason to leave it. Yet it doesn’t feed her inner flame. She also wants to own her sexuality, every last kinky enticing layer of it, and because movies work in a mythological way, “Babygirl” makes a larger statement about the desire of women to own their sexuality.
That’s why knowing that there’s a woman filmmaker behind the camera is part of the film’s sexual politics. Once Romy and Samuel (Harris Dickinson), who seduces and dominates her by acting like a dick, begin their forbidden affair, the relationship that gets played out is teeming with “wrong” things. But the movie, though it wants to be sexy, isn’t exploiting those things; it’s exploring them. Its gaze is allied with a liberated vision.
What if a man had made the same film? You could certainly say it would be more controversial. But I still think it would be the kind of hot-button conversation-starter that movies should be about. And if the ultimate truth of a movie is what’s onscreen, and if we agree that “Babygirl” is not an exploitation film, then if a man had directed it, why in theory would we need to react differently to what’s onscreen?
But here’s the thing: It wouldn’t have been the same movie. The crucial point about authorship and gender relates to the second meaning of “Could ‘Babygirl’ have been made by a male director?” Politically, that movie might have been an even hotter potato, but the real answer is: A male director would not and could not have made “Babygirl” the way that Halina Reijn made it. It’s not just about the cultural identity politics. It’s about how the film’s power emerges from a hard-wired female consciousness. Kidman’s performance is extraordinary (the best by a female actor this year, in my opinion), but part of what makes acting like this possible is that the role is conceived with an intimacy that renders Romy’s gaze more potent than ours. She’s gazing into the sadomasochistic abyss of her own longing.
I think it’s worth noting just how infrequently the movies have portrayed this level of incendiary sexual adventure, especially on the part of women. We’re used to seeing it in a fevered pop-thriller context (e.g., “Basic Instinct”). But serious erotic movies are actually very rare wildflowers. “9½ Weeks,” which Reijn has cited as an inspiration that she watched countless times when she was younger, was always, to me, the glossy synthetic kitsch version of a transgressive romance. “Fatal Attraction,” also directed by Adrian Lyne (and also an influence on Reijn), is infinitely better than “9½ Weeks,” but it’s less about sexuality than a new line in the sand that women were drawing, with Glenn Close’s Alex telling Michael Douglas’s sneaky adulterer: I will not be used and thrown away.
What “Babygirl” gets into, in the scene where Romy and Samuel meet up for an extended hotel-room tryst, is the shivery ambivalence Romy feels, her alternating current of fear and desire, and the danger too, which Samuel picks up on and uses to excite her. She’s letting go at last, but the focus is on the push-pull of her emotions. I can’t imagine that a male director would have staged that scene in quite that way.
So no, a male director couldn’t have made the movie that “Babygirl” is. For too long, women didn’t have the power to make movies like this one. In a real sense, it’s their turn. That’s a revolution to be celebrated. Yet if we pivot back to the original meaning of the question, it seems as if part of what’s being asked is, “Should a male director today make a movie like ‘Babygirl’?” And in that sense, I confess I’m a bit uncomfortable with that resounding “no.” It feels as if the “no” is coming from people who are saying, implicitly, “We’re the ones who would attack that movie. Simply for existing.” Yet do we truly want to be that lockstep when it comes to the issue of who can make what? “Babygirl” is a film that revels in throwing off the shackles of what’s allowed. We shouldn’t greet a movie like that by using it as an opportunity to lay down one more restriction on what we, as a culture, allow.