Amid the rising outcry against sex in cinema, Hollywood has seemingly seen an increase in eroticism over the past few years. From Call Me By Your Name’s (2017) peach scene to all 131 minutes of Challengers (2024), sensuality isn’t leaving our screens anytime soon.

The 2024 film Babygirl fully welcomes—embraces, even—this notion. Harkening back to erotic thrillers like Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, the A24 feature prides itself on being seductive. But with Instinct (2019) and Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) director Halina Reijn helming, the longstanding trope of a femme fatale seducing a white-collar “fall guy” is turned on its head. The result: Harris Dickinson dancing shirtless to “Father Figure,” Nicole Kidman’s incredible range, and an exploration of power dynamics, social performance, and female sexual liberation.

It’s easy to brush Babygirl off as another voyeuristic drama with a scene that borders on innocently chaste and explicitly suggestive—case in point, Nicole Kidman drinking a glass of milk. What really makes this film’s viewing experience so pleasurable, though, is Reijn’s refreshing female-centered perspective.

Building on her previous features’ exploration of the human psyche and its impact on social dynamics, Reijn injects “a radical honesty” into Babygirl’s thematic underpinnings through its protagonist, Kidman’s Romy Mathis—a woman with “all these layers, that [is] amazing in some things but [is] also weak, vulnerable, [has] sexual desires, and maybe [has] rage.” Kidman added, “Yes, there’s sex, but it’s existential in its crisis. A woman is having an exploration of who she is at this particular age, [including] her desire to hold on to her power and then relinquish it.”

That’s the catalyst behind Romy’s self-discovery, which she finds amidst an erotic tug-of-war power play with a much younger Samuel, portrayed by Dickinson. The pair’s respective positions as CEO and intern at Tensile, the film’s automation process company, may come off as an overdone cliché. Woven throughout is also the gender dynamic of Romy’s attraction to Samuel’s understated dominance, which can appear conformist to the stereotype of women’s natural inclination to ultimately want to be submissive.

Babygirl delves deeper than a high-risk affair or a woman’s submissive indulgence. Romy carries strength and confidence found in her career, position, and even motherhood. Her marriage was as loving as it was unsatisfying; intimacy with her husband Jacob (played by Antonio Banderas) lacked pleasure, and it wasn’t a safe or comfortable environment to explore her sexual wants and needs.

What she lacked in life was clarity—of fulfillment, enjoyment, and herself. Her being the face of Tensile’s automation is symbolic of her life, streamlined to a degree where she had lost any dynamism. That’s why Samuel’s arrival was an exciting wrench in her gears. Amid these intertwining relativities between power and gender, the focus is Romy’s sexual conquest—not over Samuel, but over herself. Reijn even explained how she intentionally shies away from delving too much into Samuel’s background to avoid shifting the narrative away from Romy.

Kidman’s performance perfectly captures Romy’s internal turmoil, amplified by the tender and steamy scenes with Dickinson. The latter brings a tender awkwardness to Samuel’s brazenness that keeps the character from ever coming off as disingenuous or malicious. As Reijn described, Babygirl is the story of two people falling in love with each other and exploring all the possibilities of this relationship, even amidst the social systems.

And these systems—man, woman, CEO, intern—are what make Romy and Samuel’s relationship intricate and thrilling. While Romy may seem to wield power dominance in terms of workplace hierarchy and age, it’s actually Samuel who holds the reins, as he could “make one call and [Romy] loses everything.”

Romy’s control over the situation is diminished even more through the generational gap between the two, Reijn described. Dickinson elaborated on how that disparity manifested as Samuel being socially unaware of the expected dynamic between him and Romy. Combined with his white male privilege, this afforded Samuel the confidence to engage with Romy the way he did—to a point where he “almost disrespects her a little bit.”

In a way, Samuel functions as a personification of Romy’s sexual fantasies that eventually becomes a genuine connection. It started at their very first encounter when Samuel tamed a rabid dog that almost attacked Romy, solidified through the follow-up “cookie scene,” where Samuel truly exerts his dominance by offering Romy the same cookie he used to subdue the animal. Their bond progresses through moments of vulnerability—big and small—from blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glances and rendezvous in hotel rooms to Samuel embracing a nude Romy while telling her she’s beautiful. However, as we explore their relationship through Romy’s eyes, it’s clear that the film never intends to fetishize either character.

Babygirl proves to be a deeper dissection of women’s self-censorship, self-punishment, and removal from their own sexual journey. This notion is conveyed particularly through Romy’s poignant confession of her affair to Jacob in the third act. “I told you I was someone else, and then I started to get angry that you didn’t understand who I really was,” Romy admits, synthesizing what the film is really about: Romy’s exploration of understanding herself.

The follow-up scene between Romy, Jacob, and Samuel at the couple’s country house ultimately becomes the key to understanding their interconnected web of relationships. “Humiliation, domination, submission [...] it’s neurotic. Female masochism is a male fantasy, a male construct—don’t you fucking get that?” Jacob argues, showing that behind his good-guy exterior is a tendency to position men—himself—as the subject of sexual pleasure, stripping women of their autonomy and reducing them to men’s fetish objects.

Samuel is the antithesis to this, taking the time instead to allow Romy comfort and control despite considerably being Samuel’s “baby girl.” Ultimately, Romy’s detour with Samuel grants her a newfound sense of sexual confidence, where she never feels the need to diminish herself for desiring pleasure.

This is demonstrated by the parallel opening and closing scenes of Romy and Jacob’s sex. The film starts with Romy’s fake orgasm, accentuated by performative, almost pornographic moans. But the ending is her finally finding closure on her sexual dissatisfaction in her marriage—accompanied by a real orgasm and a guttural, animalistic growl, a nod to her journey with Samuel and the dog (which, interestingly, is also interpolated throughout the final scene).

Yes, Babygirl flirts with the filmic beats of erotic thrillers prior. But the film subverts many of the subgenre’s male-focused perspectives, instead decentering men entirely from Romy’s self-exploration. This film doesn’t punish women for their sexual escapades. In the end, Romy got everything: she kept her high-power job and status, her husband and family, and pleasure in her marriage. She looked upon herself to discover her true desires and needs—proving that women are in charge of their own pleasure. That women’s kinks deserve to be more than just a man’s fetish. That, ultimately, women hold the power of their own sexual liberation within themselves.