Is ‘Babygirl’ RTO Propaganda?
Day 2 of 8 Days of Kidman
Hey everyone,
If you read my last review of The Brutalist, you might recall it was labeled as “Zionist propaganda”—a claim I found ridiculous given how much I, Carly, Queen of Jews, absolutely hated that movie. (No co-sign here, just a major boner killer).
However, I did come across a different type of propaganda messaging that no one is talking about in Babygirl: the inevitable return to office (RTO). But this movie just may have you double checking your company’s HR policy after the holiday season!
This week unintentionally became 8 Days of Kidman: a celebration of Nicole Kidman—the hardest working actress in Hollywood. It started by accident. I’d bought a ticket to see Eyes Wide Shut on Christmas Eve, and shortly after, I saw promos for a May-December erotic thriller starring Kidman and Harris Dickinson. Both are extremely hot, and honestly, anytime Kidman looks like she’s enjoying herself (after surviving her marriage to Tom Cruise), I’m sold. And since it came out on Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah, it felt only right to dub it: 8 Days of Kidman.
Realizing I was now two Kidman movies deep, I committed to a full honorary cinema week just before Criterion Channel’s Kidman Month. And honestly, it’s not too challenging to find at least six other movies or television shows starring Nicole Kidman that I actually like and would have watched anyway. (At least I’m not watching Love, Actually. I’ve never seen it, actually).
My recommendation is to watch Eyes Wide Shut first because Babygirl is a dramatic departure from that. You’d think it would be hard to match the freak of Kubrick’s covert ritualistic orgy in a mansion on Long Island, but Babygirl start-to-finish is what 50 Shades of Gray wishes it had been. The movie delivers a series of nonstop, super kinky, and very graphic orgasms that center female pleasure while exploring consensual and unconventional power dynamics inside and outside the bedroom.
Listen, Nicole Kidman is one of the greatest character actresses on the planet, and that’s why she’s doing a real service letting some women know that they could be cumming buckets right now and aren’t. At 57-years-old, she is doing this for the future of all women, and we have writer and filmmaker Halina Reijn to thank for this. (Eat your heart out, Greta Gerwig!)
In the movie, Kidman plays Romy, a founder of an Amazon-esque shipping start-up, who gives off real Girlboss vibes. Our first few moments with Romy are riding the dick of her husband, Jacob, played by Antonio Banderas—which goes on for way longer than you think it is going to. We later learn that Jacob is a very successful and brilliant theater director, making them the perfect Central Park West “power couple.”
And yet, her husband does not take his power seriously—at least in the bedroom. The opening scene orgasm takes about 5 minutes of screen time to achieve, followed by a tender moment—the familiar and well-worn touch of the same lover she’s had for nearly two decades. However, because she is post-menopausal, she’s still horny given that she’s in her sexual prime, so she sneaks off to secretly get herself off to porn while grinding on the floor because her husband never wants to role-play in any narrative that empowers her vulnerability by disempowering her. I start to wonder when this will be on home streaming.
We’re along for the ride in the audience, which might be OK if the guy sitting next to me hadn’t been like 100-years-old because someone thought it would be a good idea to bring their parents to see this movie. I wonder if they regretted that decision as I watched that scene, struggling between it being objectively hot and also totally turned off by the company.
Maybe because I was influenced by the trailers, but I had ordered a plate of hot cookies, which landed in my lap right before we launched into this now 10-minute orgasm scene (the post-coital porn fapping adds another 5 minutes onto the first one) while I sit next to grandpa, wondering when a break will come up so I can eat the cookies without looking like a total perv. At least when I ordered the champagne and cookies for Caligula, it was camp! What? I like to stay on theme!
Which is why it was completely hilarious that just at that moment, Harris Dickinson enters the scene as Samuel, a young intern at Romy’s corporation, who miraculously saves her from an aggressive dog attack by taming it with a cookie. They exchange a flirty, innuendo-laden conversation about cookies, making it even harder for me to decide whether eating mine would feel oddly suggestive or just awkward. Ultimately, I scarfed them down in record time to get it over with. Sorry, back to the movie:
This adrenaline rush from a brush with trauma coupled with this unexpected demonstration of power piques her interest in this young man, who somehow seamlessly flip flops between looking younger and older in the same role as he comes into his sense of masculine power (I thought that was a nice touch because he looks so infantilized in the office by contrast).
Let’s pause here, because this is where the film starts to feel like RTO propaganda—using exploration of power, attraction, and generational divides to subtly reflect the tensions of returning to physical workplaces in a post-pandemic world.
Between Romy and Jacob being the two oldest people, and this introductory run-in with college intern, Samuel, there is a noticeable age gap everywhere—especially in the office. If Nicole is playing her age, she’s somewhere around 57. Harris Dickinson is 28-years-old, playing someone who is still in college in their early 20s. So, where are the 30- and 40-year-olds? And is this movie reflecting the reality of what offices may look like if they continue maintaining this current dynamic of work from home?
By the way, please don’t share this on LinkedIn. The idea of participating in a LinkedIn conversation about the BDSM RTO policies makes me want to throw myself off a building.
The absence of these age groups feels deliberate, as if the film is reflecting the current reality of generational divides due to remote work. Every Gen-Z caricature—from the interns to her two teen kids—is spot on. Romy’s kid appears to be nonbinary and queer without needing a discussion about it, but somehow also has a shorter age gap from Samuel, who is supposed to be in his early 20s (Gen-Z is inclusive but also super ageist, so the age-gap parallel contrast is a little interesting just on that note).
The first time the audience really notices the age gap is at the holiday party. If I was her age and tenure as a CEO at a corporate start-up, I would not be caught dead “hanging out” with interns and my family at my company’s holiday party. And yet, Romy is there, even going as far as to down an entire glass of milk that he’s sent over.
Obviously we wouldn’t have a plot if this corporate mixer didn’t happen—but it’s also where we start to see her own ageist jealousies as she watches him flirt with someone more age-appropriate while making the carnal fuck eyes at her. There is no way he is fucking that Gen Z girl in the same way, and they both know it!
Here’s the thing: there’s no one there to distract her from this interaction. She’s often standing alone, not knowing what to do with her hands, because she’s surrounded almost entirely by young people where she sticks out like a sore thumb. There’s no age diversity, amplifying her isolation. But the audience is too fixated on the hot sex part to notice. And that’s why it feels understandable that she would go completely apeshit later when she realizes he’s screwing another intern vying for a job at the company after getting down on her hands and knees.
Apparently, this is a thing now because Gen Z wants jobs and needs to figure out how to operate like professionals after spending most of their high school and college years distanced during the pandemic. But when they come back to the office, it’s this really antisocial experience because everyone lives online now.
Millennials and young Gen X people have been the most hostile post-pandemic about returning to work. No one wants to do it. There are countless articles about this—in fact, a lot of writers were getting really tired of reproducing the same articles over and over again: “How to get people back in the office.”
So, how do you get people back in the office? By presenting office dynamics so charged with taboo—borderline illegal!—sexual tension and power struggles that metaphorically reflect the tensions between remote and in-office work. Sex sells!
Kidman’s character takes this to the extreme, risking everything for the hot young guy in the back office. Her actions blur the line between fantasy and reality, illustrating how unspoken power struggles and generational divides can manifest in messy, deeply personal ways in the digital era. (Not to brag, but I’ve been there—where a hot young guy asks you to ruin his life, and you somehow end up ruining your own instead. No regrets, though; highly recommend).
The sexual tension is undeniably electric, boundary-breaking, and completely irresistible—but he’s still an emotional man child, so the power struggle is really complicated for both of them. And maybe that’s what makes it so hot and toxic: not only is she jeopardizing her marriage, her relationship with her children, and her career, but also her future image and legacy. She’s completely dickmatized and loving every minute of it because she finally doesn’t have to figure anything out for a change.
The entire movie is a mind-fuck for everyone—them, us, the characters that we forgot about who decided to pop in and remind us about the importance of being a good role model even though all you want is to get fucked seven ways to Sunday by a guy with bad tattoos who looks like a reprint of at least a handful of guys I had sex with in Greenpoint circa 2016-2018. She even goes to a rave, where she is once again the oldest person there among a sea of Gen-Z because this is the post-pandemic world: we’re just living in it.
Millennials love nostalgia, and they can experience that by having sex with the hot, woke Gen-Z guy in their office (or maybe on a dating app, provided you adjust your settings and have a therapist ready for the inevitable fallout)! He’s super interested in consensual power dynamics but is too emotionally immature to have the tact to navigate double-timing an affair with an age-appropriate co-worker while hooking up with the CEO. But the sex is so just hot that no one knows what to do!!! A messy fantasy that highlights how reality often falls short.
“Yeah, I mean, I’m not looking for a girlfriend. You have kids and I’m just not into that.” #zeitgeist
The fact she’s even giving him this power is the turn on—something that’s actually fairly common for high-performing individuals in positions of power: for someone else to tell them what to do. And that imbalance of power becomes only more complicated and sexier and intense throughout the movie.
But here’s why I think it’s RTO propaganda: sex sells. And the movie uses sex to sell us a ticket to a feminist lecture on the importance of female pleasure, determining consensual power dynamics through solid communication (inside and outside the bedroom), putting a lot of consideration into whether it’s really worth it to fuck your coworker when there’s a major power imbalance between roles and responsibilities (even if it’s hot. Like, really, really hot), and not letting your vices control you to the point of self-destruction is key to being a good role model. But it also sells us an office.
That’s why the final takeaway was: yes, you want to fuck the hot guy at the office but you should probably check your HR policy first or try to fuck a guy that doesn’t work in your office.
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