Babygirl director addresses controversy over age-gap relationships
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Erotic thriller stars Nicole Kidman as a high-powered CEO who finds herself having an affair with her much younger intern. The director behind erotic thriller Babygirl has said she hopes her film will show that women are not “trapped in a box” anymore when it comes to relationships.
![[Nicole Kidman plays Romy, a CEO ‘whose sexual submissiveness never seems like weakness’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/23/21/Film_Review_-_Babygirl_83603.jpg)
Babygirl stars Nicole Kidman as high-powered CEO Romy, who risks her family and career when she begins a psychosexual affair with her much younger intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson). In the same interview, Reijn said her film is a “warning” against the pressures on women to maintain an external appearance of perfection, both physically and in their personal and professional lives.
In Babygirl, Romy has unfulfilling sex with her husband, attends Botox appointments and recites her company’s PR statements until she meets Samuel, at which point she risks unravelling completely. “My movie is a warning,” Reijn said. “What happens if you say, ‘No, I am perfect. I don’t have any blemishes on my soul. I’m not even aging – I look fertile even though I’m 55.’? I wanted to tell the story of a woman who suppresses the beast inside her – and then it wakes up.”.
Kidman recently told The Sun that she was first attracted to the film because it was an area she’d never explored before. “I’ve always been on a quest as an actor,” she said. “I’m always going, where have I not been? And what can I explore as a human being? And this was an area I’d never been.”.
