Preceded by sulphurous echoes from Venice, where Nicole Kidman won the Best Actress Award, Babygirl had its North American premiere in Toronto. Written and directed by Halina Reijn, this brilliant portrait of a woman tells the story of how a fifty-something businesswoman finds the sexual elation she had previously lacked in a sadomasochistic relationship with a young intern. More interested in exploring inhibited desires and ethical considerations than in any moral subtext, Babygirl is part of a recent feminine, even feminist, reinvention of the erotic thriller. A look back at a genre characterized, for decades, by a strictly masculine gaze.
And for good reason: in Hollywood, even if things are changing, studio executives, producers, directors and screenwriters are mostly men. This was even more true during the 1980s and 1990s, the golden age of the erotic thriller. Consequently, the genre was long dependent on this dominant point of view.
To use the words of the author Beatrice Loayza in her essay The Wet Dreams and Twisted Politics of Erotic Thrillersthe erotic thriller is “the illegitimate child of porno chic and film noir”. Thus, even if it does not contain any nudity, 1940s oblige, a masterpiece of black cinema as Double Indemnity (Death insurance), by Billy Wilder, in which the femme fatale (Barbara Stanwyck) leads the insurer (Fred MacMurray) to his doom against a backdrop of murder and fraud, contains sexual tension charged with eroticism.
The heroines of contemporary erotic thrillers, who appropriate traditionally masculine sources of power, provoke a male sexual panic.
Interestingly, it is a quasi-remake of Double Indemnity, Body Heat (Fever in the body), by Lawrence Kasdan, which paved the way for the erotic thriller at the turn of the 1980s, this time with Kathleen Turner as a femme fatale who manipulates William Hurt through an infinitely more assertive — and shown — sexuality. The principle of “danger” generating “pleasure”, as defined by Nina K. Martin in her work Sexy Thrills: Undressing the Erotic Thrilleris at its peak.
However, it is with Fatal Attraction (Fatal Attraction), by Adrian Lyne, in 1987, that the popularity of the erotic thriller exploded. Michael Douglas plays an unfaithful husband and father whose mistress turns out to be a psychopathic erotomaniac. In hindsight, Fatal Attraction displays a typical Reagan-era conservatism, especially with its violent, studio-imposed finale.
In this regard, in the chapter of his book Crime Films: Genres in American Cinema Dedicated to the erotic thriller, Thomas Leitch returns to a less than flattering component of the genre: its misogyny.
“The matrix of the erotic thriller is cultural anxiety about unbridled access to sex, an anxiety focused and inverted by the nightmarish fantasy of the liberated, castrating woman, figured in even more misogynistic terms than the femme fatale of film noir, because she represents a much wider range of threats.” […] The heroines of contemporary erotic thrillers, who appropriate traditionally masculine sources of power, provoke a male sexual panic.
Scary Empowerment
Now, this is another movie starring Michael Douglas, Basic Instinctby Paul Verhoeven, which changed the game — somewhat — in terms of erotic thrillers, in 1992. It did so by pushing the boundaries of sex scenes in Hollywood, as well as making Sharon Stone’s immortalized character, Catherine Tramell, an openly bisexual femme fatale.
With phenomenal success and the subject of much controversy, Basic Instinct spawns a plethora of substitutes. Of the lot, The Last Seduction (The Last Seduction), by John Dahl in 1994, is distinguished by its femme fatale played by Linda Fiorentino: her Bridget Gregory is as brilliant as Catherine Tramell, and she also leads the protagonist by the horns, or rather, by the fly. In substance, however, we return to a classic film noir plot of duplicity and loot.
As Beatrice Loayza points out in her essay, both films are pivotal in the genre for the agency they give their female characters, while still betraying a masculine fear of female empowerment.
“Many of these ‘villains’ confirm the misogynistic belief that sexually liberated women are inherently corrupt. At the same time, characters like Bridget Gregory and Catherine Tramell aren’t meant to appear human; they’re skyscrapers. Bridget is essentially the world’s greatest con artist. She’s an ideal coolespecially opposite the whiny beta male played by Peter Berg; Linda Fiorentino plays him with the biting charisma and assured sensuality of a young Lauren Bacall. [révélée dans une série de classiques du film noir]. Catherine, a bisexual heiress with a super-genius IQ, is the equivalent of a James Bond villain. As reprehensible as their actions are, these female caricatures are, at the same time, immensely satisfying to watch. We want them to triumph,” said Beatrice Loayza.
It should be noted that if these “baddies” to whom we grant our spectator sympathy have become emblematic in the genre, it is also in large part thanks to the exceptional compositions of Sharon Stone and Linda Fiorentino.
However, in Basic Instinct as in The Last Seductionthe figure of the femme fatale remains present, a vestige of the film noir of yesteryear, with all the negative connotations that this continues to carry.
Female gaze
After a decline in the erotic thriller, which suffers from an overproduction of bad films, Boundby the Wachowski sisters, gave the genre a salutary electroshock in 1996 by subverting almost all the codes of film noir and erotic thriller. In fact, with its two lovers (Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon), one of whom is in a relationship with the gangster from whom they both steal a briefcase full of cash, Bound offers a unique lesbian variation, which both subverts and comments on the traditionally masculine and heteronormative clichés of this type of story.
A failure at the time, but since re-evaluated upwards, In the Cut (Raw), by Jane Campion, does a similar work of subversion, but by focusing more on the notion of the female gaze (“ female gaze “), as opposed to the male gaze (“ male gaze ”) endemic.
It follows Frannie (Meg Ryan), a literature professor who is irresistibly drawn to a cop who may be a murderer (Mark Ruffalo): a “homme fatal”, in a decisive inversion of the femme fatale figure.
In this feminist reworking, it is the man who is objectified by the gaze of the protagonist and, by extension, that of the director: a new scenario in the Hollywood erotic thriller. The dynamics of desire and power are also more complex, because they are free of the eternal fear of castration: a haunting that the female gaze rightly has no use for.
A liberated vein
This explains this, the field is now open for other considerations, concerns and explorations within a genre long confined to a handful of narrow parameters. Like Fair Playby Chloe Domont, in 2023, with its heroine who sees her life turned upside down after becoming her partner’s superior, Babygirl is part of this emancipated vein of erotic thrillers.
Nicole Kidman’s Romy (who co-produced In the Cut) is the subject, not the object, and her unbridled fantasies are at the heart of the reflection proposed by the filmmaker Halina Reijn. Like Frannie before her, Romy frees a part of herself that was previously inhibited by giving herself over to a transgressive affair that will either free her or break her. In both cases, the directors refuse to “punish” their heroines as would have been the case in the past.
In short, in the revised and improved erotic thriller, the association between pleasure and danger remains, but the perspective has irremediably changed.
The movie Babygirl will be released on December 25.
Francois
Levesque
is in Toronto
partly thanks
in support
from TV movie
Canada.