Should you watch « Baby Girl » by Halina Reijn with Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson & Antonio Banderas ?
Synopsis of “Baby Girl”
Romy, a successful and admired CEO, has a husband and two teenage daughters. She begins an affair with Samuel, one of her new interns whom she encountered in the street while he was taming a dog that was about to attack her. She is immediately attracted to his confidence, his disregard for office conventions, and his general rebellious attitude. As their BDSM-tinged relationship develops, the levels of danger also increase.
“Baby Girl”: a step backward?
While it is true that there are few female CEOs in real life (only 8.2% of CEOs in the Fortune 500 companies are women, according to the 2021 Women CEOs in America report), it is the same on screen.
Only about a dozen films and series have featured a female CEO in a lead role.
“Baby Girl”: an exploration of power & submission
For once, a woman, Halina Reijn, directs a film about another powerful woman, and we could expect an original look at her journey and daily life.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. The fantasy of Romy, played by the brilliant Nicole Kidman, who is in her fifties, is a rather clichéd one: to be submissive, but not to just anyone — to her young and handsome intern.
Why so many superlatives assigned to this film?
“Baby Girl” addresses two problematic aspects.
The first is the submission fantasy, which may seem reductive for a character who is a woman in power.
The second concerns the power dynamic that Romy exerts over this young man. Although the word “consent” is mentioned several times, it is not enough to simply say it to legitimize such a complex relationship from an ethical standpoint.
At what point can such a dynamic be considered acceptable in a work where the age and status difference is so pronounced?
If a man had directed this film today, one could legitimately imagine that the reviews would have been much harsher.
“Baby Girl” could be seen as a more intellectual version of Fifty Shades of Grey, but without true eroticism. The film occupies a blurry zone between aesthetics and message, and reinforces stereotypes about female submission.
“Baby Girl”: what the film tells us about submission and consent
The director explained in The New Yorker article that she had watched Nine and a Half Weeks several times.
Adrian Lyne’s film did not claim to address female desire in such a theoretical way; it simply portrayed two lovers in a passionate story.
“Baby Girl” seems to want to go further in exploring psychology, but ends up falling into caricature, particularly during a scene where Romy passes a moral judgment on her own desires. What could be more fitting in a “Trumpian” era?
However, if husbands sometimes dream of something, it is surely of having a fulfilled wife who is submissive in bed — at least in the clichés of a certain banality of masculinity, so that nothing changes in their daily lives.
If you’re looking to see Nicole Kidman in an unforgettable scene where she drinks milk from a saucer, then this film may appeal to you.
But the actress has recently taken on much more subtle roles, such as in Expats by Lulu Wang, a much more complex story, and a role in which she is marvelous, now available on Prime Video.
What to watch this week besides “Baby Girl”
This week, I highly recommend you watch the beautiful Brazilian film I Am Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) by Walter Salles.
Adapted from Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s book Ainda Estou Aqui, the film revisits the disappearance of his father, Rubens Paiva, a Brazilian Labor Party deputy, in 1971 during the military dictatorship.
Fernanda Torres, who plays Eunice, Rubens’ wife, won the 2025 Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Dramatic Film — beating Nicole Kidman for Baby Girl and Angelina Jolie for Maria.
A symbolic success, twenty years after her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, was nominated in the same category.
TRAILER BABY GIRL
TRAILER EXPATS
TRAILER “I AM STILL HERE”
