Babygirl and A Beautiful Lack of Consequence
When dodging repercussions is the sexiest thing of all
Warning! Babygirl spoilers!
I saw Babygirl a few weeks ago, in a half-empty cinema in Ealing, and I loved it. I went with two close friends - one hated it, viscerally, for understandable reasons. The other was less certain of her feelings, needing more time to sit with what we’d watched. Her first reaction was dislike, but then a few days later she messaged, “I think…I love it?” The jury is still out on that one.
As we debriefed afterwards on the walk home, I was surprised by our different reactions to it. I’m sure they were too - we tend to agree on almost everything, so this was novel, and maybe a little unsettling. Between us there was a range of emotions - anger, confusion, excitement, curiosity. My friends are intelligent, brilliant people, and the points they made were valid. We debated if it was possible to have feminist sex - and what that even meant - in a straight relationship, whether the power bestowed by wealth and status can outweigh gendered power dynamics, and if the entire relationship was based on coercion.
If you’re still planning to see the film you might want to skip ahead a couple of paragraphs. Babygirl is about a CEO, Romy, (Nicole Kidman) who is bored and unsatisfied by the sex she’s having with her husband. She mentors an intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson) who pushes boundaries, challenging her authority - and massively turning her on in the process. And so begins their affair, developing into a dominance/submissive dynamic that turns Romy into a reckless, furious mess, terrified of losing everything, yet so consumed by desire and sexual re-awakening that she cannot stop herself. Power see-saws between her and Samuel - who, at one point, reminds her he can destroy her life with a single phone call - like a couple passing a sweet back and forth between their mouths. And when it implodes, as we all know it must, there’s only one winner.
I loved the film, but there was a lot that wasn’t great, which I think is reflected in some of the critical reviews - some have called it unstimulating (!), clichéd, overambitious, problematic, etc etc. There are scenes that attempt to be provocative, but come across as downright uncomfortable. Romy is at first plagued with the fear that she’s taken advantage of a young intern, until he reminds her that he could expose her at any moment - and then carefully dangles that threat above her the entire relationship. There’s a scene where she agrees to be totally obedient to him when they are alone, but the discussion is tainted by this threat that would destroy both her career and her fame, which feels far too close to coercion, even rape, to ignore. There’s a very underdeveloped exploration of Romy’s childhood, when she vaguely mentions growing up in a cult. She is clearly traumatised by it - we see flashes of her undergoing EMDR therapy, and describing herself as ‘not normal’ - implying that her desire to be submissive during sex stems from her childhood. I think most disappointing was that there was no scene where Romy and Samuel lay out the terms of their dominance/submission, which felt absurd, because surely that’s the one of the first things you discuss when you’re in a hotel room, lapping milk up off a saucer.
We wondered whether portraying a powerful woman as needing to dominated elsewhere was a sexist cliché, or a reflection of a real, and therefore valid, desire. We agonised over the idea of sexual desire being a reflection of the inequalities that already exist in our society, and what sex might look like in a feminist utopia. All this, from 1 hour and 54 minutes of our time.
The more my friends and I spoke, the more I realised why I’d connected with the film so strongly. For me Babygirl is, at the core, about power and its consequences - or the lack thereof. And I’d spent the past two years working on a book that explores exactly that, for better or for worse. A Beautiful Lack of Consequence is my debut short story collection that picks apart power dynamics from many angles - age, class, gender, capitalism, motherhood - and tried to imagine a world where women live free from the consequences of their actions, even if those actions are bad. It’s unsettling, unpredictable, a little dark - my friend describes it as a feminist black mirror. No wonder I connected so strongly with the film, particularly its ending (another spoiler alert). Babygirl was marketed as a thriller, and there are certain red herrings that leave you wondering - fearing - that something terrible is going to happen to Romy. Something violent, that cannot be undone, and that would have undermined everything that had come before. In many ways an ending like that would have made sense. How many times do we hear stories of women being murdered by enraged partners? How often are women who have affairs allowed to simply slip back into the folds of their old life, as though nothing happened? But to my relief, the film ends with Romy gaining a whole new sexual dynamic with her husband, one that caters to her needs. The film starts and ends with Romy having sex with her husband - opening with a fake orgasm, closing with a real one, which is far more guttural and animalistic. Thank fucking god. It is Samuel who vanishes, transferred to a new job in Japan, who we never hear from again. Though you can’t exactly call that a terrible outcome for him, it’s clear that he was the ultimate loser, despite being the one ‘in charge.’ Romy loses nothing at all.
I'm tired of seeing women being torn down for being selfish, unlikeable or transgressive. It’s why I wrote my book, it’s why Babygirl’s ending was so delicious to me, and it’s why, I hope, readers will connect with my work. At a time where we seem to be drowning in consequences - from politics, from climate change, from violence, from inequality - dodging them feels seductive. The idea that women need to be moral and likeable to make it out unscathed is unbelievably boring - isn’t it far more interesting to see what they can get away with instead?
Not all of my characters come out on top - some stakes do need to exist, after all. A woman walks into a bar, and nobody notices. A couple are punished for their childlessness with an unsettling nocturnal visitors. A girl trades her vocal cords for a chance at freedom, and oh god, what happens next could eradicate a whole civilisation. A door-to-door salesperson offers the antidote to women’s fear – but it comes at a high price. But for every one of these characters there is a foil, a chance to slip free of expected endings and inevitable conclusions. Power is malleable, slippery, flirtatious. Not everyone wins, but when they do, it thrills.
One of my favourite lines in the book is nestled within an experimental short story called ‘A Woman Walks into a Bar’. In this case, the unnamed, married protagonist is about to have a very overt affair.
She knows anyone can see them - a car even slows down to get a look, bearing down on the horn. She sees the blur of an open mouth. A small voice tells her they could be people she knows - or worse, people who know her husband. A second, much sexier voice says:
Fuck you. Just once, I want to be the fire, not the forest.
Babygirl is all about the fire, and Romy does not burn. What could be more irresistible?
On a separate, but important note, I find it so devastatingly ironic that as we walked through the night, there was a man on a street corner acting in a way that felt threatening enough for the three of us to duck into a Tesco. My friend called her boyfriend to come pick us up. We waited for him underneath bright lights: the consequences of being women in a world where gender-based violence is so normal it’s not even a shock. There is nothing beautiful about that.
Interested in reading A Beautiful Lack of Consequence? Pre-order it here!
AND FINALLY
This Babygirl reference has nothing to do with anything I’ve written, but I can’t stop laughing at it. Credit (and thanks) to No Context Off Menu for making this.
A quick favour. I love writing these posts, and I intend to do them for free for as long as I can. If you enjoyed reading this, forward it to a friend (or three) who you think might like it too. It helps massively, because validation from strangers is truly the only thing that makes the horrors bearable for me.