REVIEW: Smouldering Babygirl fails to ignite the big screen

Presumably sniggers aren’t exactly what you are looking for if you are making a steamy erotic thriller. But there were a fair few tonight as director Halina Reijn’s Babygirl veered towards the silly just a little bit too often.

It’s a film that is being muttered about as a Fatal Attraction for our times – which doesn’t exactly help it. Babygirl doesn’t come close to the 1987 Glenn Close classic when it comes to edge-of-your seat menace, and nor probably does it try to. It’s aiming perhaps at something rather more subtle – though it isn’t entirely clear what and it doesn’t convincingly achieve it.

Nicole Kidman gives it her all, though, as the super-smart, super-successful Romy Mathis, a woman who has risen through the ranks to become the self-assured, confident boss of a weird warehouse robotics company. She’s seemingly got it all, married to Antonio Banderas, two kids, two houses etc. But of course, it isn’t enough. There is something dark inside her, and it’s festering out of control – largely because poor old Antonio falls woefully short when it comes to satisfying her between the sheets. She’s wanting thrills. She’s wanting danger.

And she immediately senses them in the cocky, insolent intern who wanders in, showing no respect for her position and zero humility for his own.

It’s a slow-burn to start with, but eventually things start to sizzle as they tumble into all sorts of games of domination and submission. Overwhelmed by lust, Romy is soon on all fours, lapping milk from a saucer. Whatever floats your boat. Meanwhile, Samuel (Harris Dickinson) is detached and distant to begin with – though they do reach a stage where the affair seems to fire on both sides. The threat, though, of course, is discovery – not just within the business, but particularly when Samuel starts turning up at Romy’s home.

But it’s not a film that particularly grips – largely because it’s so difficult to feel anything terribly much for either of them. Samuel is a dislikeable chancer whose real aims are forever unclear; and while Romy is clearly highly vulnerable in her damaged state of vastly-unfulfilled longing, she’s hardly terribly appealing either. It’s a brave performance from Kidman, but it’s not a film that draws you in anywhere near as much as director Reijn needs it to.