New York at Christmas time, a forbidden romance. Nicole Kidman first experienced this in 1999, in Eyes Wide Shut. Stanley Kubrick's film opens with her naked, perched on high heels, her voluptuous figure facing away from us. In front of the mirror, she is absorbed by her reflection, utterly flawless. In filming women's bodies, Kubrick drew inspiration from fashion photographer Helmut Newton (1920-2004). The idea was to construct a mirage, a male fantasy. By the end of the film, Kidman's tearful face responds to the opening scene. Glossy paper versus a real woman.
Twenty-five years later, Babygirl was released, Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn's response to Stanley Kubrick's film. What's happened since then? There's been #MeToo, a torrent of liberated words about sex as a weapon for men, about pleasure, about women's bodies. In Babygirl, it's still New York, still Christmas, but this time it's Kidman, a powerful woman, attempting to define what she wants: To submit to a young intern who offers her the absolute pleasure of losing control when you’re at the top.
In one scene, Reijn responds to Kubrick's opening: Kidman is naked but faces us. She is a 57-year-old woman standing before us, with pert breasts, abs of steel and the buttocks of a young girl. The eye is reassured: It skims across a smooth, immaculate image – no fat, no hair and no sagging flesh mar its contemplation. In its posthuman perfection, this body exhibits the signs of a rigorous discipline, costly in time and money: intensive exercise, strict diets, cosmetic medicine and self-care practices beyond the average person's imagination. It proclaims its relentless efforts, reveals that it can escape nature, and suggests that Kidman probably had no other option. Before being the body of a woman in her 50s, it's the body of a star.
It seems to have become a trend in Hollywood: Several recent films feature budding romances between women and younger partners. Lonely Planet (Susannah Grant, 2024), with Laura Dern, 57, and Liam Hemsworth, 35; The Idea of You (Michael Showalter, 2024), with Anne Hathaway, 42, and Nicholas Galitzine, 30. Kidman appears again in A Family Affair (Richard LaGravenese, 2024), opposite Zac Efron, 37. In France, Les Jeunes Amants ("The Young Lovers," Carine Tardieu, 2022) pits 75-year-old Fanny Ardant against 52-year-old Melvil Poupaud. This trend likely reflects a demand for stories that challenge the sexist norm of love stories between a man and a woman young enough to be his daughter – swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction.
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