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Paul Asay
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Movie Review

Romy Mathis earned her corner office, her high-rise Manhattan window, her family home in the country. She built her career on automation. And some might whisper—behind her back—that she’s bit of an automaton herself.

She’s climbed the corporate ladder, rung by methodical rung. She worked her way to the top through her brilliant intellect, chilly professionalism and iron-fingered resolve. When Romy confesses to her assistant, Esme, that she spent her childhood in a series of communes and cults, Esme is flabbergasted.

“I thought you were raised by soldiers or robots,” she says. And when Romy turns on her with a withering stare, Esme stammers, “I’m joking. Of course.”

Of course. Esme would never want to offend Romy—not when Romy has achieved so much. She’s CEO of a massive, growing, automated delivery company. A wife. A mother. Romy is proof that women can truly achieve anything. Everything. For Esme and others, Romy’s life looks like a fantasy—a fantasy they hope to, one day, make real for themselves.

But while Romy’s front-facing life might run with the smooth efficiency of her bustling, automated bots, it’s not all positive earnings reports and happy breakfasts with the fam. In the night’s darkest hours, she indulges her own fantasies. Her own unspoken urges.

Enter the intern.

The first meeting, he saved Romy from an onrushing dog by calming it with a cookie. (“You always have cookies on you?” she later asks. “Yeah,” he says. “Why, you want one?”)

The second, he was with a pack of other interns. “Do you really think automation can provide a path to sustainability,” he asked, “or is that something people say to make you like robots?” (He and the other interns were swiftly ushered out of her office.)

The third, he met her on a cold balcony during a Christmas party and asked her for a light. Oh, and also, he chose her as his company-approved mentor.

“I’m not part of that program,” she tells the intern.

“You’re on the list,” the intern says.

They go back in without saying another word. But Romy watches him—Samuel—dance with other interns. Romy is no automaton. She has desires. Urges. But to explore them with an intern? A boy half her age? A temporary employee several rungs below?

Well, for Romy, that just might be part of the attraction.


Positive Elements

Romy does indeed have a dalliance with Samuel, as we’ll unpack below. But she also appears to love her family. Outside the bedroom, she and husband, Jacob, have a strong and affectionate bond with one another. She cares for both of her two daughters (even if the relationship with the oldest seems a bit strained). Those relationships—not her affair—appear to be her highest priority. And initially, it seems as though Romy tries to keep her own passions in check and prevent the affair from happening.

For his part, Jacob loves his wife a great deal. And that makes the film that much more heartbreaking. We hear that one of Romy’s daughters gave her hiking shoes to a homeless person.

Spiritual Elements

We don’t hear much about Romy’s childhood, but we do hear that she lived in communes and cults, and that she was “named by a guru.”

Romy asks Samuel what his astrology sign is. Samuel smiles and tells her that he doesn’t believe in that stuff.

We hear that a character has started reading the Bible during a time of crisis. The film takes place during Christmas.

Sexual & Romantic Content

Let’s just tell it straight: This movie is built on sex. I want to keep this section as brief and straightforward as possible, so I’m not going to go into a lot of detail or unpack everything we see here. But I do need to give you just a bit of context.

For all the power and control she exerts in most areas of her life, Romy wants, on some level, to feel powerless and out of control when it comes to sex. We’re given a hint of that early on: After having sex with her husband, Romy pulls on a flimsy top and scampers to a walk-in closet with a laptop; she masturbates as she watches porn. We don’t see anything critical on screen, but by the dialogue we hear from the porn film, it’s obvious that the “relationship” is one of dominance and subservience, with the female calling the unseen male “daddy.”

That tone is very much in play throughout Romy and Samuel’s affair. At one point, Romy promises to do whatever Samuel asks her to, and so she does—even if it’s lapping milk out of a saucer like a dog. In another scene, when Romy’s being manually stimulated, she complains that she’s going to urinate—a scene that’s designed to speak to the control that Samuel is taking from her. And one extended scene runs to the sounds of George Michael’s rather creepy song “Father Figure,” which bolds and underlines the uneven sexual power dynamic in play.

The film seems to suggest that Romy, in sating these long-forbidden desires, becomes both a better mother and a better leader; her relationship with her daughters strengthens, and her bonds with Jacob don’t seem to suffer (as long as the affair is secret, that is).

Several scenes depict sexual activity—all of which feel very graphic and tawdry. Most of these scenes keep critical body parts out of view. But in one scene, we do see a woman fully nude, her hands covering her genitals and most of her breasts. (A nipple is visible at times). The camera captures a woman’s bare rear in a few scenes, too.

Romy’s daughter, Isabel, is in a same-sex relationship. She asks her parents if she can have a “sleepover” with her girlfriend, Mary. They say no. Later, when the family visits their house in the country, Romy looks outside and finds Isabel skinny-dipping with another girl (we hear that she’s 17 years old) in the family pool. When Romy calls her on it, Isabel says, “I am in love with Mary. I’m just having fun with Ophilia.” (That likely echoes Romy’s own thoughts—contrasting her domestic love with Jacob and the “fun” she has with Samuel.)

A hedonistic nightclub is filled with people dancing, some of whom are only partially dressed. Eroticism feels practically communal on that dance floor: A woman seems to try to pull Romy into a same-sex dalliance. Two men dance together, their hands on each other’s heads.

Romy tells Jacob that she’d like to watch porn while he has sex with her. She covers her head as he begins to touch her, but Jacob makes her stop: Not being able to see her face “makes me feel like a villain.” The film features a lot of sexually charged touching. Guys go shirtless. We see Romy in very flimsy nightwear several times, as well as in a modest bathing suit and a couple of fairly revealing evening gowns.

Romy alludes to her childhood, wondering whether her unusual sexual predilections stem from that period of her life. (She doesn’t get any more explicit.) We see lots of passionate kissing, and at one point the threat of death seems to be used as a turn-on. A colleague makes a very unprofessional suggestion to Romy, which she swiftly rejects.

When Romy shows up unexpectedly at Jacob’s workplace (he’s a theater director), he quips that the last time she paid him such a visit was in 1997, “when you thought I was having an affair with a lighting technician.”

Violent Content

Jacob is directing Hedda Gabler—a play that involves passion and death and despair. His star actress, Jacob complains, doesn’t understand the story. “She thinks it’s about desire,” Jacob says. “It’s not about desire; it’s about suicide. Hedda’s life is over before the play begins.”

A dog attacks a pedestrian, using teeth to pull on his arm, before sprinting toward Romy. (The dog is called off before he reaches the woman.) Two people get into a fight, necessitating some frozen peas to ease the swelling and bruising. A man and woman wrestle on a hotel floor. When Jacob makes sexual advances on Romy one night, she repeatedly slaps him away—not wanting to be touched by him.

Someone suffers what appears to be a breath-robbing panic attack. We hear someone threaten to kill somebody else. Romy fishes a dead skunk out of a swimming pool. Romy receives a series of injections (possibly Botox) without the benefit of a numbing cream.

Crude or Profane Language

Nearly 20 f-words and about seven s-words. God’s name is misused about six times, while Jesus’ name is abused about three times.

Drug & Alcohol Content

People drink wine and whiskey at parties and get-togethers. Romy joins another group of women for drinks after work. Someone orders Romy some milk as a sort of joke; Romy downs it.

Romy and Samuel both smoke cigarettes, and the two possibly share a bit of marijuana later. Romy takes a puff from a cigarette that Isabel smokes.

Samuel moonlights as a bartender, and we see him at work in one scene. A man invites Romy to his house for drinks.

Other Noteworthy Elements

Romy walks in on Samuel in a restroom as he’s using a urinal. Several scenes involve abject humiliation on Romy’s part.

Conclusion

It’s been a few years since #MeToo has been at the forefront of the cultural conversation, but the serious issues behind it haven’t gone anywhere. People abusing authority and power to get what they want—namely sex—continues. And it continues in the worlds of business, in entertainment, and even in the Church.

On one level, Babygirl is an examination, inversion and deconstruction of #MeToo.

Here, the roles have superficially been reversed: A powerful woman takes a fancy to a much-younger man and dives headlong into an ill-advised relationship. She’s aware of the obvious power dynamic in play—when they kiss for the first time, she’s aware that it’s her fault. She notes how young he is. And when Romy tells Samuel that she doesn’t want to hurt him, she’s not just speaking personally, she’s speaking professionally. At least once, she acknowledges that she could fire him if she so desired.

But that CEO/intern dynamic—one so obviously in favor of Romy—isn’t so lopsided as their professional relationship would make it seem.

“I think I have power over you,” Samuel tells Romy. “Because I could make one call, and you could lose everything. Does that turn you on when I say that?”

For Romy, it does.

To be sure, Babygirl is just as much about power as sex, but sex is a huge—and extraordinarily problematic—part of the movie.

Babygirl earns its R rating within its first five minutes. The first sounds you hear, and the first visuals you see, are those of two people in bed together. The film’s attention to sex never wavers from that point on. Actions that, in real life, are typically kept sequestered behind the bedroom door are trotted out in the open, for (if distributor A24 has its way) millions to see. Of all the sexual themes the film addresses, one of the biggest lurks not on screen, but in the theater itself: that of voyeurism.

If you took out all the film’s sexually charged scenes, you’d have—well, a movie that’s a mere 40 minutes long. But it’d still be rated R, given the language involved.

As mentioned, Babygirl is all about sex and power—and how one can hold sway over the other. The truth is, sex and sexual images come with a power all their own. We’ve seen that power in play in the ubiquity of sexualized images across the internet; the way those images can warp our understanding of sex; how they can dehumanize us, objectify us, belittle us; deconstruct humanity into bits of flesh.

Intentionally or no, Babygirl, when viewed by some, will add more to that dehumanization than to the conversation about sex and power. And some will lap up what the film serves in a saucer and beg for more.


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Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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