Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Nicole Kidman\u2019s acting is not bad at the start of her new film Babygirl. But she is acting. Or at least her character is. Kidman plays New York chief executive Romy Mathis, who in the course of opening-scene sex with husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) gasps in orgasm. Later in the film, however, we see the real thing. The first one, we know now, was not it.The deal currently offered to older women actors sharpens into focus. Demi Moore may soon win an Oscar for embodying the horrors of Hollywood middle-age in The Substance. For Kidman, there is a star role in which she is to be seen having Botox, submissive fantasies and sexual releases whose tone and volume act as plot points.The movie is made to be a hot potato. The themes are flammable: the lot of senior women in corporate life, age-gap relationships, S&M. But it has no obvious agenda. \u201cHow inappropriate do you find this?\u201d it asks with a smile.We next meet Romy at work. (Her business is automated parcel delivery.) A gaggle of interns have joined. One is less than fazed: Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a confident young man often on a cigarette break. Exchanges are loaded. Romy tells him to get her a coffee. He does, but tells her in turn she really shouldn\u2019t drink it after lunch. For a moment, Kidman blanks.Is this old-school sexism? A bluntly non-hierarchical Gen Z just passing on a health tip? Or a bomb-drop flirt with kinky implications? Director Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies) makes sure we see each party notice the itch just under the skin of the other.Once the extramarital sex gets started, dynamics upend. Samuel takes a dominant role. Oh God, you think \u2014\u00a0a 51st Shade of Grey? But the frolics are more fraught with real-world stakes than that silken fantasy. Less po-faced too. Sexual experiments bring self-conscious laughter. Are we seriously doing this? The movie asks itself the same thing. Erotic thriller clich\u00e9s loom. What time does the blackmail start? But Reijin likes setting traps more than springing them. She knows an anticlimax can be fun too.\u00a0As a satire on business, Babygirl is sometimes coy. Except when it isn\u2019t. Romy\u2019s passing mention of growing up in \u201ccommunes and cults\u201d is there to be read as the making of a mind primed for sexual power games \u2014 or a certain kind of company leadership. \u201cWho\u2019s in charge?\u201d is the other constant question. The answer changes a lot, though one is hidden in plain sight. In actuality, Romy\u2019s Midtown office is the headquarters of studio backers A24.In a movie about sex, the performances are critical. Dickinson makes sense of a character whose mix of boyish gangle and bedroom mastery may have been easier to write than play. But that is even truer for Kidman, who puts nuanced flesh on the bones of Reijn\u2019s ideas. The film involves much less nudity than it seems to. For the star, it is still exposing enough that you may wonder afterwards about the roles that now bring actors like Kidman and Demi Moore back to the film industry\u2019s top table. Liberatory, or something more knotty?\u00a0Babygirl may or may not have an opinion. Either way, you suspect Reijn would like knowing the film has got into our heads, and given us something to chew on.\u00a0\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606In UK cinemas from January 10 and in US cinemas now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Nicole Kidman\u2019s acting is not bad at the start of her new film Babygirl. But she is acting. Or at least her character is. Kidman plays New<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":158227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-158226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158228,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158226\/revisions\/158228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}