LE MONDE'S OPINION - SEE IT

Romy (Nicole Kidman), an attractive fifty-something, is the haughty, untouchable CEO of a New York tech company. Married, with two loving daughters and a tender, desirous theater director husband (Antonio Banderas): Everything is obviously going far too well for a film starring Nicole Kidman. That was the idea of Halina Reijn, the Dutch director whose Babygirl is her third feature film.

Paul Verhoeven's compatriot, who played an actress in Black Book (2006), lays down her cards right from the start and, like the master, doesn't pull any punches. There's the opening scene, in which the wife isolates herself in the living room to find pleasure in a porn movie, after feigning orgasm with her husband in the conjugal bedroom. Then there's the sequence that follows – outside, daytime, New York – in which an aggressive dog, about to attack a passer-by, is magically rendered perfectly docile by a handsome young man, under Romy's interested gaze.

In fact, she runs into him a little later in the office, and after standing up for herself, agrees to be his internship advisor. During one of their first conversations, when she asks him out of curiosity how he mastered the animal, he confesses that he always carries cookies in his pocket and asks her, with a twinkle in his eye, if she'd like to try one ...

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