It’s been 25 years since Nicole Kidman’s last erotic Christmastime film, and we are overdue for another one. Thankfully, the good people at A24 are releasing Babygirl on Christmas day. The new film, directed by Halina Reijn and starring Kidman and Harris Dickinson, follows the relationship between a high-powered CEO and her intern as they embark on a kinky and torrid affair. Awooooga!
This is the movie that’s going to blow up your group chat over the holiday break — get ready to start using the milk emoji more than ever — so here’s everything you need to know.
Babygirl premiered at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year, where Reijn was nominated for the festival’s highest honor, the Golden Lion. Kidman was given the award for Best Actress but had to miss the ceremony because of the unexpected death of her mother.
“I’m in shock and I have to go to my family, but this award is for her. She shaped me, she guided me and she made me. I am beyond grateful that I get to say her name to all of you through Halina,” Kidman said via a statement delivered by Reijn. “The collision of life and art is heartbreaking, and my heart is broken.”
Following its successful debut in Venice, Babygirl was part of the Toronto International Film Festival lineup. Reviews coming out of those festivals were mixed-to-positive, with Vulture’s Allison Willmore calling it “an adventure into self-discovery that’s unabashedly indulgent but always surprising.”
Speaking to Vanity Fair ahead of the film’s Venice premiere, Kidman shared that shooting all the sex scenes in the movie took a toll on her. “It left me ragged. At some point I was like, I don’t want to be touched. I don’t want to do this anymore, but at the same time I was compelled to do it. Halina would hold me and I would hold her, because it was just very confronting to me,” the actress said.
“There were times when we were shooting where I was like, ‘I don’t want to orgasm any more,’” Kidman recently told The Sun. “It was so present all the time for me that it was almost like a burnout.”
At a screening of the film earlier this month, Kidman told the crowd that she is always trying to push herself in a new direction. “I’ve always been on a quest as an actor, 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,” she said.
While she’s not afraid of the unknown, Kidman also requested that Reijn make sure she didn’t go too far. “When I met with Halina, and we talked through it, I was just like, ‘Just give us a safe space,’ and then, ‘Please don’t make me look like a fool,’” Kidman said when speaking to Variety.
I mean, wouldn’t you be? Like the rest of us, Dickinson is a Kidman fan. “Subtly, I kept asking her things like, ‘What was it like working with Stanley Kubrick?’ I was there always like poking at the fact that she is this monolithic figure in cinema,” he recently told Variety.
“She is like the most comforting, warm performer to work across from,” Dickinson said. “She sets the tone on set, and she makes it so easy to be vulnerable and to be funny, because she is so daring. She’s so brave, and she does stuff, and you’re like, ‘What the fuck is that?’ You can’t even think of it.”
Yes, Babygirl is coming out on Christmas, but unless you have a really chill relationship with your mom, I think you need to leave her at home for this one. My colleague Brooke Marine has seen the film, and I asked her for her thoughts. “I can think of nothing more uncomfortable than experiencing this movie with my family at the holidays,” she told me.
I don’t even think I could handle watching the trailer with my family. This will be perfect for that time around December 27 when you desperately need to get out of the house. If you are a “going to the movies in Christmas” kind of family, might I recommend the Timothée Chalamet Bob Dylan movie? That thing looks sexless, and your dad will love it.
