Babygirl Movie Review:)Babygirl is the work of Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn. Babygirl, she tells attempts to find an articulation in the desire and power plays of a modern woman with all complexity through relationships as well as part of the quest in trying for both emotional fulfillment and sexual fulfillment in Romy played by Nicole Kidman. However, with awkward performances and issues in the development of its characters, this film fails to achieve its aspirations. This review will discuss why Babygirl fails to achieve its ambitious goals.
Babygirl Movie Review And Plot: Unfulfilled Desires and Power Dynamics
The plot of the movie is that of Romy (Nicole Kidman), a high-powered businesswoman running a robotics company in Manhattan. On the surface, Romy has it all: career success, a wealthy and seemingly attentive husband (Antonio Banderas), and a family. But beneath this façade, Romy is very dissatisfied with her marriage. Her husband, however well-meaning, cannot fill her emotional and sexual needs. She secretly yearns to investigate her desire to dominate, but she cannot talk about these feelings within her marriage.
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The film takes a turn with the life of Romy when she observes Samuel, a young intern at her workplace. Romy finds Samuel really interesting when she happens to see him tame a dog on the streets of New York. Their interaction slowly transforms into an unsettling relationship involving power, submission, and desire. A work-based interaction rapidly evolves into something entirely inappropriate, and the film never really creates a connection between its characters.
Character Development: Shallow and Underdeveloped
The biggest flaw with the film Babygirl is that its characters are rather shallow and poorly developed. Romy, portrayed by Nicole Kidman, is a lady who has achieved very high professional success and yet feels emotionally frustrated. However, the film fails to penetrate into some psychological reasons about her dissatisfaction. Here is a character in the movie where her desire to be submissive without much explanation at all, leading the audience confused at times on what prompts her behavior. Kidman acted well, though the script wasn’t doing anything for her at all.
Similarly, Samuel is thoroughly undeveloped and portrayed by Harris Dickinson without ever reaching a point where any motivation is put in place for the character, or at least for his emotional progression; he instead acts as a trigger for Romy’s wishes only, while none of his thoughts or feelings are granted. This creates an enormous difficulty in being able to sustain the relationship with Romy through the entire film.

Antonio Banderas, as Romy’s husband, could have been used to add depth to the film. His character is supposed to be a representation of Romy’s emotional frustration, but his performance is stunted by his whispered delivery, which becomes more of a distraction than a characterization. The lack of communication between the characters makes the emotional impact of the film less effective, leaving the viewer struggling to connect with anyone on screen.
Themes: Misguided Exploration of Desire
Babygirl tries to handle the issue of female desire, unsatisfied marriages, and complexity of contemporary relationships. Unluckily, this attempt does not succeed in sounding rather shallow and exploitative when tackling the film’s themes. It would have been interesting if Romy’s desire for submission was seen as a natural response to the emotional void within her, and it could have been a comment on the dynamics of power in relationships. But the film fails to go deep enough into this concept.
Babygirl reduces the desires of the characters to a spectacle instead of analyzing the emotional and psychological dynamics of the situation. The desire of Romy for domination is more of a plot device than a genuine look at her emotional depth. The attempt of the film to shock or provoke fails because the central awkward relationship between Romy and Samuel only heightens the discomfort and does not say anything about the emotions of the characters.
What would have been explorative of deep human sexuality and emotion needs turns to be an unfulfilling and awkward film. The connection between Romy and Samuel leaves no real meaning to the connection without any consequences making the viewer not know if it is taking this movie to make amends with such desires for some shock value in the film.
Acting: A script that would not be rescued by the commitment of Nicole Kidman.
Nicole Kidman performed very committed to Romy, giving her all; emotional distance is portrayed perfectly. Still, unspoken desires of her character are as well portrayed without being said a word. Even though the character’s ability is shown by portraying complex characters, such as Babygirl does not have much material in her to get much from that actress.

Harris Dickinson’s take on Samuel is weak and inconsequential. He has no concrete development as a character, and Dickinson fails to bring out any emotional depth necessary to make this relationship believable. Antonio Banderas, as Romy’s husband, is nearly a silent and passive character with his whispered lines only to strip away from what little character there is of the husband.
Final Verdict: Missed Opportunity
In short, Babygirl is a movie which tries to reach out for very complicated themes that are even too heavy at times, failing in trying to stick to some interesting plot; underdeveloped characters and awkward performances, without anything deep on its central themes. This makes this a very unsatisfying experience. The saving grace for this film happens to be the best part which is Nicole Kidman.
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So shallowly told and used for the purpose of shock to meet a need of the film, it can offer nothing fresh and worthwhile about its theme-power, desire, and unrequited love. In the end, Babygirl is a film that seems far more interested in making a good scene than in telling a thoughtful and textured story about human relations and desires. For all its pretension of exploring those issues, Babygirl is far short of such goals.