The Press at the 81st Venice Film Festival | Woman or female dog

In Babygirlan erotic thriller with a sadomasochistic character by Halina Reijn, presented in official competition at the Venice Film Festival, Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson engage in a sulphurous pas de deux.

(Venice) Babygirl begins in the heat of the moment. Even before we see Nicole Kidman’s ecstatic expression in close-up, we hear her moaning, groaning, panting. Little by little, we discover her riding Antonio Banderas. And then comes the orgasm with a capital O. But now she leaves the room to go masturbate while watching child pornography. Clearly, things are not going well for this character that she embodies body and soul under the direction of the Dutch actress, screenwriter and director Halina Reijn (Instinct And Bodies, Bodies, Bodies).

“It’s a film about desire, secret thoughts, truth, power, consent,” the Australian actress said at a press conference on Friday. “It’s a liberating story about freedom of expression made possible through Halina’s female gaze. As I promised at Cannes, I want to support women filmmakers.”

“It’s a film about female desire that speaks to an identity crisis, but also about the ability to love yourself in all layers of your personality. It also shows two generations, who expose very different perceptions of sexuality, and then how they can learn from each other,” added the filmmaker.

“I went to several film festivals,” Banderas recalled. “Before, this film could not have been presented in a festival because it would have been considered politically incorrect, would have been a victim of censorship. I am very proud to have worked with Halina, who goes off the beaten track.”

Romy (Kidman) has everything to be happy: powerful CEO of a company claiming to want to combine artificial intelligence with emotional intelligence, married to Jacob (Banderas), a dark and talented theater director, and mother of two daughters, Isabel (the English Esther McGregor, seen in Bleeding Love alongside her father Ewan) and Nora (the American Vaughan Reilly, seen in the series Russian Doll), with whom she gets along relatively well, despite the elder sister’s cruel criticism of her physique. In addition, she has the chance to work with a brilliant and ambitious young woman, Esme (Australian Sophie Wilde, winner of the Choppard Award for Best Female Revelation), who is only too happy to support her.

The limits we set for ourselves

One morning as Romy goes to work, a young man manages to stop a dog from charging at her. A few moments later, the CEO discovers that it is Samuel (the Englishman Harris Dickinson, revealed in Triangle of Sadnessby Ruben Östlund), one of the company’s new interns. When she asks him how he managed to calm the dog down, he simply replies that he gave her a biscuit. “Do you often carry biscuits in your pockets?” she asks. “Would you like one?” he asks with a hint of arrogance. That’s all it takes for Romy and Samuel to soon begin a relationship that is as torrid as it is twisted.

“Samuel embodies the confusion of today’s man who questions himself about how to behave sexually,” Harris Dickinson said. “I think the film also explores the limits that we can set for ourselves,” Sophie Wilde commented.

When a journalist, after comparing Babygirl to the erotic thrillers of the 1980s and 1990s, asked why Nicola Kidman’s character did not have a similar fate to the female characters of the time, the director’s response was not long in coming.

“When I was young, my parents taught me that we don’t embody Good or Evil, but both at the same time. I think that by connecting with the character, the viewer will feel less alone,” she added.

Babygirl containing several scenes of nudity and sexual content, not to say sadomasochistic in nature, the issue of nudity on screen was of course discussed. “I approach each project artistically, without censorship, hence the importance of feeling safe. In Halina’s hands, I did not feel exploited, but respected. When I shoot, I do not think about my body, but about the story, so we had several discussions about the psychology of the character,” explained Nicole Kidman, praising the tact of director of photography Jasper Wolf.

“He’s a genius at putting actors at ease,” the director added. “This beautiful collaboration is the secret of success.” “I would also like to salute Lizzy [Talbot]our intimacy coach, said Harris Dickinson. I was very nervous about doing those scenes, when at heart they’re choreographed.”

“No matter what we shoot, everything has to be done in a sacred place because everything is intimate, not just the body, but the emotions too. Together, we created a bubble that protected us from the outside world,” Nicole Kidman concluded.

Brief return on Disclaimer

Thursday night the final three episodes of Alfonso Cuarón’s miniseries, starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, were screened. While the first six episodes of Disclaimer prove to be most captivating, the whole thing falls apart in the seventh episode, which drags on unnecessarily on a melodramatic note.

While Blanchett’s character, a famous documentary filmmaker who discovers that she is the horrible protagonist of a novel by an unknown author, remains credible until the end, it is quite different for Kevin Kline’s character, a modest grieving professor who sent her the novel. Of course, the actor’s performance is absolutely delicious, but the gestures he makes sometimes transform the last episodes into a grotesque thriller. As for Sasha Baron Cohen’s performance as the egocentric husband, it goes from sober to caricatured.

Read Disclaimer: his word against hers

Finally, telegraphed in a rapid series of flashbacks to the first episode, then denied by images that are at first overwhelming and then misleading, the revelation of what really happened in the female character’s youth leads to a reflection on the blindness of parents in the face of the mediocrity of their offspring.

Babygirl will be released on December 20.

Disclaimer will be on Apple TV+ starting October 11.