Kate Hagen highlights the best of the year’s cinematic sex stories • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

This dialogue burrowed its way into my soul during Halina Reijn’s blistering Babygirl, as I imagine it will for many other viewers who see themselves in Romy, Reijn’s fascinating, flinty protagonist. Romy (Nicole Kidman) has it all: a hot husband (Antonio Banderas, back to his amorous, Almodóvarian roots) and a daughter who both love her, a lucrative career as an innovative CEO, and a tony lifestyle befitting of both. But Romy is plagued by secret fantasies of sexual submission, which she compartmentalizes as masturbatory material until she meets Samuel (Harris Dickinson), an intern she’s meant to mentor.

Romy first spots Samuel taming a wild dog with cookies—a motif that will become integral to their exhilarating, precarious D/s (or, for my fellow still Tumblr-brained friends out there, DD/lg) dynamic. Within days, they’re clandestinely kissing in a conference room just before their consumptive carnal hunger takes control of them both, shown in stunning sex montages set to INXS’s ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ and ‘Father Figure’ by George Michael that had me barking at the screen.

Romy and Samuel’s age gap and high-wire work charade aren’t the entire focus of Babygirl, as Reijn is far more intrigued by what’s going on under the surface of the expansive oceans within Kidman’s indigo eyes, as well as the casual control—and comforts—contained in Dickinson’s lean limbs. Romy even gets to experience one of the most emotionally resonant orgasms ever captured in a mainstream movie thanks to Samuel, Kidman going absolutely feral with raw, ragged breath intensity: Babygirl is an essential new entry in the cinematic canon of finger-banging, even if that list is staying private for now.

An icon of the erotic thriller from Dead Calm to To Die For to Eyes Wide Shut, Kidman is fearless in front of Reijn’s camera, delivering the most primal performance of her career. Reijn may have been influenced by corporate thrillers like Disclosure, but she isn’t particularly interested in punishing her characters with the harsh consequences most erotic thrillers conclude with. Instead, Babygirl uses kinky sex as a conduit to much deeper emotional excavation for its characters, who get more than just a metaphorical happy ending. Rejoice, ye faithful: Nicole Kidman has, as Robert writes, “once again let her Christmas freak flag fly.”