Babygirl (2024) review

Feeling "sexually unfulfilled" by her theater director husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas), his wife Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman), the CEO and founder of Tensile Automation (a robotics company), gets "lured in" by young and aggressive intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson) and the two of them start a kinky affair, with Samuel relishing the role of the dominant figure and making Romy crawl around on all fours ... except this threatens both her marriage and her career.  While the premise lacks nuance - if the roles were reversed what would modern viewers think of it? - and psychologically speaking it's a smidge over-simplified - who knew powerful individuals harbor fantasies of being degraded? - where it goes right is in not taking itself seriously and casting three strong talents to make it work: Kidman's commendably icy (it brings to mind her performance in To Die For), Dickinson is straight out of a Harlequin novel and Banderas (playing against type) is sympathetic as the Latin lover-turned-cuckold.  Reijn wisely prevents it from going where one might anticipate once Romy's personal assistant Esme (Sophie Wilde) confesses she knows about the illicit relationship ... because she wants to keep the Sisterhood intact (and get a promotion).  To those who claim this "glorifies" cheating: I'm fairly certain we watched different movies.