Babygirl director addresses controversy over age-gap relationships

Erotic thriller stars Nicole Kidman as a high-powered CEO who finds herself having an affair with her much younger intern

The director behind erotic thriller Babygirl has said she hopes her film will show that women are not “trapped in a box” anymore when it comes to relationships.

Babygirl stars Nicole Kidman as high-powered CEO Romy, who risks her family and career when she begins a psychosexual affair with her much younger intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson).

Writer-director Halina Reijn said it should be “normalised” that women have relationships where their partner is younger than them: “We internalise the male gaze, we internalise patriarchy, and we need to free ourselves from it,” she told W Magazine. It’s really hard.”

In the same interview, Reijn said her film is a “warning” against the pressures on women to maintain an external appearance of perfection, both physically and in their personal and professional lives.

In Babygirl, Romy has unfulfilling sex with her husband, attends Botox appointments and recites her company’s PR statements until she meets Samuel, at which point she risks unravelling completely.

“My movie is a warning,” Reijn said. “What happens if you say, ‘No, I am perfect. I don’t have any blemishes on my soul. I’m not even aging – I look fertile even though I’m 55.’? I wanted to tell the story of a woman who suppresses the beast inside her – and then it wakes up.”

Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in ‘Babygirl’ (© Miss Gabler Productions LLC; Miss Gabler Rights LLC)

Kidman recently told The Sun that she was first attracted to the film because it was an area she’d never explored before.

“I’ve always been on a quest as an actor,” she said. “I’m always going, where have I not been? And what can I explore as a human being? And this was an area I’d never been.”

The Hollywood star is already receiving critical raves for her performance after Babygirl premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where she was awarded Best Actress.

The Independent’s Geoffrey Macnab said of her performance: “We’ve all seen Kidman in TV dramas like The Perfect Couple and Expats, giving accomplished but slightly stiff and mannered performances. Here, she digs much deeper.”

He added: “Reijn is one of the Netherlands’ most respected stage actors, well known for her work with the controversial Ivo van Hove.”

“She elicits Kidman’s best performance in years as the headstrong, fiercely independent business woman whose sexual submissiveness never seems like weakness. A film that could have slipped into voyeuristic prurience is instead witty, subversive and emotionally revealing.”

Nicole Kidman plays Romy, a CEO ‘whose sexual submissiveness never seems like weakness’ (© Miss Gabler Productions LLC; Miss Gabler Rights LLC)

Speaking at VFF, Reijn said the relationship between Kidman and Dickinson’s characters allows them to “play out their confusion around power, gender, age, hierarchy and primal instinct”.

“Despite its forbidden nature, the joy of that exploration is liberating, even healing,” she said.

Babygirl is released in cinemas on 10 January 2025.