BabygirlReview: Nicole Kidman Is at Her Brave Best in a Wild Tale of Sexual Adventure

Mar. 15, 2025

A24

Nicole Kidman, as you probably know, is a dauntingly hardworking actress of great versatility.

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She plays Romy Mathis, a married Manhattan executive who embarks on a reckless affair with her intern Samuel (The Iron Claw’s Harris Dickinson). Samuel’s attractiveness seems to have more to do with a presumption of masculine authority than youthful sex appeal. (Dickinson, come to think of it, suggests Ryan Reynolds in a permanent, brooding sulk.) Anyway, the relationship veers into sadomasochism, with Samuel as the dominant player. He commands Romy to drink, catlike, from a bowl of milk, and she obeys.

Kidman goes all out in these scenes: She seems to have found a modern equivalent toBelle de Jour,the dreamily perverse 1967 classic in which Catherine Deneuve, as a French wife with hair the color of properly chilled champagne, fulfills her repressed erotic fantasies.

Romy, of course, is risking a hailstorm — think reallylargestones, or smallish boulders — that could destroy her career and alienate her colleagues and her husband (Antonio Banderas). This storm arrives, in due course, and Romy is pummeled.

source: people.com