Babygirl

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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I saw Nicole Kidman live on Broadway in “The Blue Room,” the play where she famously appeared nude (well, her backside). She has flirted with erotic thrillers from the very beginning of her career, appearing topless in “Dead Calm,” the one where Billy Zane kidnaps her on a boat. And she certainly flirted with erotica in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut.”

Now she’s starring in “Babygirl,” a sexy, provocative film that she describes as “This is a place that I haven’t been.”

The film opens with Kidman’s character having an orgasm. And it goes deeper from there.

Here we have a story of a female CEO (Kidman) who risks family and career by embarking on an affair with a very much younger intern (Harris Dickinson).

The sex looks startlingly real – good acting, of course.

As the movie unfolds, Kidman delivers many other “much more feral climaxes.” 

For a major movie star with five Oscar nominations and two Emmys, you might be surprised that she’d go this far on screen.

“Babygirl” harks backs to earlier erotic thrillers like “9 1/2 Weeks” and “Basic Instinct,” but with the gender flipped.

At 57, Kidman gives a deeply personal and daring performance. “Eyes Wide Shut” was 25 years ago, another time, another husband, another stage in her ever-expanding career.

This year, she’s been exceptionally busy, an onslaught of projects following the standstill of the AFTRA strike. Her six recent projects include the Netflix murder mystery “The Perfect Couple,” which became the most-watched original streaming series in the US in September; the Taylor Sheridan spy thriller series “Lioness” on Paramount+; and Lulu Wang’s prestige drama series for Amazon Prime, “Expats.”

And, of course, the A24 film “Babygirl,” directed by Halina Reijn, the Dutch actress, writer and film director. A Theo D’Or and Golden Calf award-winning actress, Reijn is perhaps best known to local cinephiles for “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” which marked her prominent entry into American cinema as a director.

Maybe it was having a female director-writer that encouraged Kidman to tell this story of sexual obsession from a woman’s point of view.

“She is one of the few people who practices what she preaches when it comes to feminism and empowering women,” Reijn says of her star. 

Kidman’s next project is “Scarpetta,” an Amazon Prime series based on Patricia Cornwell’s mysteries about a Boston medical examiner.

Nicole Kidman seems more in demand than ever.

So, why did she do a sexy movie like “Babygirl”?

Kidman shrugs and offers a simple answer. “It’s a calling,” she said.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com