Babygirl review

This review will include spoilers, is focusing on heterosexual exploration, and silently screams about why we're all so British about sex chat.

Sex.

There. I said it.

It seems to be a very big secret, which is a shame considering it’s one of my top five hobbies -

Perhaps people feel that its distasteful, and conversations should be kept secret behind locked doors. But I’m calling bullshit. Shame dies when stories are told in safe spaces, and if we’re talking about female pleasure in hetero situations, there’s a mountain of shame that we carry heavy on our shoulders from hundreds of years before us, and it needs to go.

The night Babygirl was released, I went to see it with a girlfriend. It was a sold-out viewing, and due to excessive yapping, we were the last ones in the theatre and we had to watch it separated. In hindsight, I’m glad I was alone to fully tap into everything that it could bring up for me.

“It’s just a film’ doesn’t really work when sex, and more importantly, female pleasure and desire sit at the forefront of the plot.

The conversation and modelling of positive sexual connection is the lagging feet of western feminism. In my own life, I embodied this dutifully (did you, too?). It was only a few years ago that I questioned why I was faking so many orgasms, and how the focus in my own bedroom, in my own bed, was on making him climax. I was just the toy that enabled that for most of my twenties. At nearly 35, I am only starting to feel confident talking about what I want, and not feeling the heavy weight of shame while doing it or being judged as a slut and little else.

So, this wasn’t ‘just a film’. This was an opportunity to speak in a silenced room; like a disco hall in year 6 with boys on the left and girls on the right. Petrified of one another. But this time it was women on the left and the realities of their own pleasure on the right. This film sat in the middle of us, and it was the audience’s unified reactions that made me so compelled to write.

There was a lot of complexity and tenderness that we didn’t have time to explore and felt rushed in both the screenwriting and direction. We were ‘almost there’ for most of the themes.

It also felt not particularly ground-breaking in terms of representation. I wondered how much of this film was resting on the haunches of two very objectively attractive leads. Very slim, very white, very generic (if you want more sexual exploration and diversity I highly recommend ‘Cheaters’ on BBC Iplayer). There’s nothing particularly fascinating about a woman taking the submissive role in powerplay either, but I did enjoy that she was a CEO. And an older woman. And a Mother. Obviously.

The sex explored wasn’t as spicy as the public reviews made out, and I wondered if this was an indicator to how little we are allowed to ‘dream big’ in the bedroom. But I’m glad for the entry-level format in this instance. As someone who loves to explore, I often describe myself as ‘Kinky to someone who likes missionary’ but ‘incredibly vanilla to the kink world’. It feels as though there’s no middle ground to the conversation and this doesn’t help with judgement. It is an outdated viewpoint to associate someone who openly speaks of sex as damaged, with ‘daddy/mummy issues’ (we all have those, babe) or laced with poor emotional attachment.

While I recognise sex is a lot deeper than ‘just sex’ and derives from the depths of our human experience and psyche, it can also be as simple as time for release, connection for play and for joy. Powerplay can be used to put the external pressures of our lives to bed (so to speak) and to either let someone else take charge (for once?), or to assert some dominance in a safe space. This film was a wonderful bridge in following sexual desire without being met with dungeon parties, latex and polyamory (all good things, but we don’t have to be all or nothing here).

What I found beautiful about Kidman and Harrisons connection was the humour created and the unease, almost embarrassment, of a new sexual connection. We had the honour of watching this relationship grow from the ground up, and with that came the difficulty in figuring out desire, what worked and what didn’t, and what boundaries had to be in place. I’ve been here very recently, I thought.

Harrisons’ character’s ability in not taking themselves too seriously was beautiful. I could’ve watched it on loop for hours. Here was a man asserting a dominant sexual role, and doing it with vulnerability and humour. Tasty.

There were two moments of audience reaction that play rent-free in my head. When Kidman snapped to her husband that ‘she hasn’t had an orgasm in 15 years’, we all inhaled through our teeth, making a hiss. Like touching something hot or being pricked by a needle. And then I cried. Because that communal hiss was holding a collective truth, saying ‘me too’, or at least an acknowledgement to the lack of interest in our pleasure.

I questioned my own relationship with sexual fulfilment when I heard the quote ‘If you’re not being served, you’re serving’. I can’t remember who said it to me, but it felt like such a greater problem than one between the sheets. I started to peel into my own relationships with men like a bitter orange, and how little any of them considered me at all. In any avenue of life. In sex, in every day.

The other moment that took me by surprise was when Kidman’s character climaxed, the audience laughed. I didn’t. I found it beautiful and I wondered if I missed the mark. Perhaps it was supposed to be funny? I’m guessing the laughter was coming from the noise sounding quite animalistic, instead of the generic orgasm you hear in pornography. I was curious - as soon as I was home I took to the negative reviews and so many of them referenced ‘hearing noises they didn’t need to hear from her’. I’m so glad the film did this. So much of our education falls from the male-dominated field of pornography, and it’s no wonder we’re all accustomed to making the noises we think we should be making.

I actually read into this a few years ago after my boyfriend barked at me to ‘SHUSH’ during sex in my apartment (gorgeous).

Like any person whose defence mechanism is hyper-intellectualisation rather than feel the damn feel, I searched google and ordered books for answers to why I felt such confusion/sadness/anger. I found an article that focused on the primality of sex, and how it felt to have a real, deep-rooted orgasm. It’s incredibly animal, and the noises are often replicated as such when we strip away our performative conditioning. It made me sad to see women having an orgasm was a bit of a laugh…

I could write a thousand words on every scene of this film. Some good, some meh, and a couple that really didn’t do it for me. In short, it was a sexy film because they were sexy and the acting was hot and it was a nice, generic fantasy. Some bits felt mildly relatable to my personal life, that’s nice too right? It was too heavy in exposition, it lacked subtext, but it touched me. There were too many big themes that none got the attention they deserved, and I felt dissatisfied. But I will never, ever feel dissatisfied at watching Harris Dickinson chew bubble gum, with a little side grin, whispering ‘good girl’.

I have to stop writing at some point, but before I go, a little nod –

To the cinematography, to the scene of the rave that summed up every good feeling on a dancefloor, to the scene with ‘Dancing on my own’ that couldn’t have done a better job of summing up the suffocation of societal expectations in motherhood: the well-behaved bit that swallowed me whole, the moment Kidman applied blush like war paint or took ultimate control in one of the last scenes in her office sipping coffee, the bit when Banderas spat out his lines with absolute conviction, when Dickinson told Kidman to open her legs and say how it felt - she said ‘scared’, and whoever thought of adding George Michael to a slow dance deserves a fucking knighthood.

Take your boyfriend. See if they laugh at her orgasm – go from there.