Reports of the death of the movie star, to grossly paraphrase Mark Twain, have been greatly exaggerated.
The cult of the movie star is as strong as it’s ever been with the likes of Glen Powell breaking through in recent years and old reliables like Denzel Washington still proving they command gravitas and respect.
It is that much more difficult for the female movie star to stay on top, however, but Nicole Kidman has proven time and time again she is able to remain queen of the mountain.
Her latest film, Babygirl, is yet another reminder of why she has captivated audiences for decades now.
The Aussie star turns in one of the most daring performances of her career in this new psychological drama which casts her as a high-powered CEO who begins an affair with a much younger colleague in a bid to attempt turmoil at home.
Nicole Kidman has been one of Hollywood’s most daring actors for years now – TV projects like Big Little Lies, her work with Jane Campion in Top Of The Lake, being perfectly matched to Yorgos Lanthimos’ sterile strangeness in Killing Of A Sacred Deer – but she wisely uses her role as the star who gets the film financed.
Kidman has worked with the likes of Campion, Lanthimos, Eggers and Coppola over the last decade to get esoteric films off the ground and lends much-needed gravitas to the likes of the Aquaman films as well as the viral AMC cinema ad.
With Babygirl, Kidman is front and centre of proceedings and it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role.
In her role as a high-powered CEO you fully buy her as a power-hungry, phone-addicted high-flyer who is itching for a break from the norm away from work.
If Kidman fails to get an Oscar nomination for this but managed to get a nomination in 2022 for her pitiful performance in Aaron Sorkin’s interminable Meet The Ricardos, Oscar voters should go to their rooms and think about what they did.
As the film starts, we see that Kidman’s character is trapped in a marriage with Antonio Banderas that appears to have it all on the surface but is very obviously falling apart the more you look at it.
A young intern, played by rising star Harris Dickinson, enters her life and proceeds to throw a grenade into her life.
The film has three distinct movements; Kidman at work, Kidman and Banderas trying to solve a failing marriage and at the heart of the film, Kidman and Dickinson getting in over their heads.
Dickinson has been a rising star for a few years now thanks to roles in films like Triangle Of Sadness, Where The Crawdads Sing and The Iron Claw and the 28-year-old is shaping up to be one of the premiere acting talents of his generation.
Dickinson is incredibly skilled at presenting himself as a supremely cocky operator to one person and a chilling, manipulative sociopath to someone else.
Reijn correctly identifies that the audience is there to see the chemistry and tension between Kidman and Dickinson and the film soars when we see their interplay.
Fatal Attraction has already been invoked in this review and it’s easy to see Dickinson as something of a male analogue Glenn Close’s defining role.
One minute he is all sugar and peaches, the next he makes your blood run cold, and Kidman is a perfect match for his unpredictable energy.
The erotic thriller is a staple of post-Hays Code Hollywood (if that plot description sounds familiar, yes, it does sound an awful lot like the kind of movie Michael Douglas was the king of for many years) but Dutch director Halina Reijn manages to make it feel fresh.
HBO drama Succession looms large over the film industry – Oscar contender Conclave owes a lot to the visual language of the hit drama and Babygirl borrows a lot of the cinematic grammar deployed by the show.
A lot of the action of Babygirl takes place in flashy high-rise offices, full of glass and marble and people in nice suits have intense, charged conversations.
Reijn deploys a lot of tricks used by European auteurs; long, static shots where the actors go in and out of frame, the weird, otherworldly score that’s designed to disorientate, and the biggest calling card, uses a lot of muted colours in the cinematography to conjure a cold and clinical feeling.
The obvious comparison for this film is the work of her compatriot Paul Verhoeven and his work on the likes of Basic Instinct but this film makes it clear that Reijn is her own voice who has things to say.
The strength of Babygirl is how it flips the gender dynamic; if this was an old school Michael Douglas thriller where he was the put-upon CEO who has an affair with a younger female colleague the gender politics of the day would have decided he was the de facto hero of the story like in Fatal Attraction.
Babygirl uses the post #MeToo era to flip the script on gender dynamics and stand out from the pack.
While we have spent the majority of this review singing the praises of the cast, Reijn will not get the credit she deserves and it’s important to realise films don’t exist without an auteur helming the ship.
The austere, European sensibility that Reijn brings to the film is the secret weapon, much like how Dennis Bergkamp was the creative spark that set up Thierry Henry.
The Oscars typically like to reward actors for their worst roles and totally ignore them when they turn in great performances like Kidman in Babygirl.
We fully predict this to play out over the next few weeks.
Despite all the talk of 2024 being a weak year for films and January being catch-up month, Babygirl is a shock to the system and proof that smart, adult thrillers are back in vogue.