Nicole Kidman mentioned she felt “exposed and vulnerable” as erotic thriller “Babygirl” premiered on the Venice Film Festival Friday, with the veteran actor pushing herself removed from her consolation zone.
Kidman performs Romy, a high-powered New York CEO who embarks on a torrid, sado-masochistic affair with a brand new firm intern, performed by Harris Dickinson, risking her marriage to her husband (Antonio Banderas) and household life.
An orgasm each opens and ends the movie, with a roller-coaster of frenzied want and psychological manipulation in between, leaving the viewer in a heightened state of anticipation through the no-holds-barred movie.
“This definitely leaves me exposed and vulnerable and frightened and all of those things when it’s given to the world, but making it with these people here, it was delicate and intimate and very, very deep,” Kidman informed a press convention forward of the premiere. “Right now we’re all a bit nervous.”
One of 21 movies in the principle competitors for the Golden Lion prize, “Babygirl” is the third movie for Dutch director Halina Reijn, who additionally wrote the script.
The examine of 1 girl’s sexual want, it additionally explores energy relationships — and turns a few of them on their head in stunning methods.
Early critiques have been principally constructive, with Variety calling Kidman “fearless” within the movie that captures “something genuine about women’s erotic experience in the age of control” and IndieWire calling the movie a “sexy, darkly funny, and bold piece of work”.
The movie manages to subvert the seemingly dated erotic style, whose heyday within the Eighties and 90s produced movies resembling “Fatal Attraction”, “Basic Instinct” and “9 1/2 Weeks”.
“I’m very delighted to be able to make a film about female desire but it’s also a film about a woman in an existential crisis and it has many layers,” mentioned Reijn.
That was the curiosity for Kidman, who in 1999 delved into the style together with her then-husband Tom Cruise in Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, “Eyes Wide Shut,” equally an in-depth take a look at sexuality and the human psyche.
“I want to examine human beings,” Kidman mentioned Friday.
“I want to examine women onscreen, I want to examine what it means to be human and in all facets of that and the labyrinth of that,” she mentioned.
Last 12 months’s Golden Lion award went to a movie unabashedly exploring themes of self-identity and sexuality — “Poor Creatures” from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos.
In that feminist transforming of “Frankenstein,” actress Emma Stone shattered the norms of Hollywood modesty in her portrayal of Bella, a sexually voracious reanimated corpse who lives unashamedly for pleasure.
Kidman — who wore a two-tone Schiaparelli robe on the crimson carpet forward of the screening — mentioned “Babygirl” additionally match her agenda to advertise feminine administrators.
She mentioned she needed to “put my weight behind a lot of women now in terms of directors, to try to change the ratio”.
The hole between women and men administrators in movie festivals has narrowed lately amid extra consideration to gender parity, however girls administrators are nonetheless underrepresented.
This 12 months, Reijn is one in every of seven girls administrators in the principle competitors of 21 movies.
Having a lady on the helm of “Babygirl” was important, mentioned Kidman, 57.
“It’s told by a woman through her gaze… that’s to me what made it so unique because suddenly I was going to be in the hands of a woman with this material and it was very, very deep to be able to share those things and very freeing,” Kidman mentioned.
She acknowledged that nudity — of which there’s comparatively little within the movie — was not a main concern.
“I will just completely abandon (myself) to the story, to the nature of the character I’m playing, so I don’t think about bodies per se, I just think about how do we tell the story,” Kidman mentioned.
Ultimately, Reijn mentioned the movie is in regards to the query: “Can I love myself in all my different layers?”
“And I hope it will function as a tribute to self-love and liberation.”
© 2024 AFP