At the Venice Film Festival premiere of “Babygirl,” the audience seemed pleased by director Halina Reijn and star Nicole Kidman’s erotic thriller centered on female pleasure.
Before the film even ended, a climactic scene had already elicited claps from viewers inside the Sala Grande. As the credits rolled, the crowd stood and cheered for the cast and crew, which also includes Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, and “Talk to Me” breakout Sophia Wilde.
The upcoming A24 release tells the story of a shipping technology executive, played by Kidman, who enters into a sadomasochistic relationship with one of the new interns at her company, played by Dickinson.
The film marks Reijn’s follow-up to the horror comedy “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” the Dutch actress turned director’s English language debut as a writer, though this time she took on the job of director as well.
Given the previously taboo subject matter “Babygirl” explores, Kidman and Reijn, at the film’s press conference earlier in the day, were on the defensive about how audiences would respond to the film.
“For each person that sees the film to interpret it, their interpretation will be wildly different,” said Kidman. “If we polled everyone in this room, they’d have a completely different reaction to Romy and the way she behaves. My connection to it is I want to examine human beings. I want to examine women onscreen, what it means to be human in all the facets of that and the labyrinth of that.”
Reijn later added, “I don’t believe in good and evil. We are all both, and we need to shine a light on that. The moment we suppress it, that’s when it becomes dangerous. I don’t want any of my characters to be punished. I just want them to be. That’s when we can really connect with them and feel less alone.”
