Nicole Kidman just might shut her eyes when upcoming erotic A24 thriller “Babygirl” premieres at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
The Oscar winner and “Eyes Wide Shut” alum told Vanity Fair that “Babygirl,” which is written and directed by Halina Reijn, is the most “exposing” film of her career.
“I’ve made some films that are pretty exposing, but not like this,” Kidman said. “I just work with abandonment. […] A lot of the themes in my movies have been explored through the lens of sexuality. I’ve not eliminated that or tried to pretend it isn’t there. […] That’s vulnerable, but I’m never going to shy away from that to my dying day. I’ll place myself in a vulnerable position, and see where that takes me.”
Kidman plays a CEO whose marriage to a theater director (Antonio Banderas) is on the rocks. She finds passion with a new intern (Harris Dickinson), with whom she begins a BDSM affair.
Kidman said that the production was taxing at times as she “never came out of it, really” between takes.
“It left me ragged. At some point I was like, I don’t want to be touched,” Kidman said. “I don’t want to do this anymore, but at the same time I was compelled to do it.”
She continued, “I felt very exposed as an actor, as a woman, as a human being. I had to go in and go out like, I need to put my protection back on. What have I just done? Where did I go? What did I do?”
As for the film’s debut at Venice 2024, Kidman is unsure how she will react to watching the personal feature with an audience.
“It’s like, Golly, I’m doing this, and it’s actually now going to be seen by the world. That’s a very weird feeling,” Kidman said. “This is something you do and hide in your home videos. It is not a thing that normally is going to be seen by the world.”
During the production, Kidman credited Reijn for building a safe partnership on set.
“Halina would hold me and I would hold her, because it was just very confronting to me,” Kidman said. “It was being able to talk unbelievably honestly and graphically — and that’s woman-to-woman, as though you are sitting on your bed and talking to your sister or your best friend. That’s incredibly safe. Halina has a very strong maternal instinct, so she was very protective of all of us. But particularly me.”
She added, “I just kind of went, ‘Right, that’s it. I will open myself up to you every which way, and let’s see where we go together.’ I would hope that you feel us in the movie, because it’s very much an us.”
Reijn, who previously directed “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” explained the inspiration for “Babygirl.” The film was first announced in November 2023, and Reijn cited how “Indecent Proposal” and “Basic Instinct” were cinematic references for the workplace feature.
“[Those films] made me feel less alone with my own hidden sexual fantasies and desires, and from that moment on, I started to dream about being able to create something like that myself — but from my own perspective,” Reijn said. “This gave me more fire to try to shine a light on that, because I’m still struggling with my own shame around it.”
Reijn teased, “I know we accomplished one thing, and that is that we made a really hot movie. I don’t know about good, bad — that’s up to everybody — but I’m sure of that.”
“Babygirl” will debut at Venice. Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera previously told Variety that the film is “about a sadomasochistic relationship within an American corporation” and is a testament to the changing culture.
“Compared to other similar films, the ending actually testifies to the differences between now and the past,” Barbera said. “A film on this same theme 20 or 30 years ago would have ended very differently. Without spoilers, I will say that the female protagonist who engages in illicit behavior, so to speak, in the past would have been punished.”
A24 will release “Babygirl” theatrically on December 20.
