Is cinema sexy again? How 'Babygirl' is inspiring important conversations about kink

Opening to the splintered moans of a fake orgasm, Babygirl gets straight to the point. 

Shortly after having sex with her husband, Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman) sneaks to a darkened room where, lying prone, she frantically masturbates to the dim glow of her laptop, which is playing dominance and submission (D/s) porn - this time making herself come for real. 

In these few short minutes before the title card hits, those feverish voids between want and need, performance and self, desire and shame have already been laid bare. 

It’s such starkness that has drawn so much attention to Dutch filmmaker’s Halina Reijn’s new erotic drama, which tells the story of a high-flying CEO of a robotics company who engages in a BDSM-coded affair with a young intern named Samuel (Harris Dickinson).

After she encounters him taming an aggressive dog on the street outside her office, something true and agrestal is ignited within her, accelerating a carnal pull that threatens to derail the glossy life she has so carefully constructed. 

An inversion of 80s genre touchstones like 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction and Disclosure, Reijn spins a narrative of familiar tropes - adultery, work and personal life conflict, uneven power dynamics - but flips them to be from the female gaze, in the process unravelling the frenetic and fumbled frays of female desire. 

It arrives during a reported drought of sex on screen. Analysis by Stephen Follows in the Economist found there to be 40% less sexual content in Hollywood films compared to the start of 2000, with approximately half of all movies today now showing no sexual content at all.

Meanwhile, younger audiences want more films focused on platonic relationships, with over 62% of those aged 10-25 years old agreeing that sexual content is not necessary to advance plots in movies or TV shows, according to UCLA's 'Teens and Screens' report.

But the unashamed horniness at the heart of Babygirl, along with other sexually-charged releases like Nosferatu, Queer and Anora, beg the questions: Are films getting sexy again? And are we finally on our way to more accurate representations of kink?  

More unconventional sex please!

“Not a dry seat in the house”, reads one of the top reviews for Babygirl on movie journaling app Letterboxd. “We cum to this place for magic” is another.

Hardly Pauline Kael, but thirst-driven reviews and memes have, somewhat predictably, taken over the film’s online persona and inflated its sex appeal.

What’s surprising then, is that Babygirl isn’t actually that sexy - not in the traditional sense, anyway.

Most of the sex scenes unfold through montages, the main one set to George Michael’s ‘Father Figure’ as Samuel dances topless and the boundaries of their relationship are established. We only see the couple having penetrative sex briefly, and there’s no male nudity - something our resident critic bemoaned in his review of the film. Instead, the focus is on what’s in-between - all the clumsy, sometimes embarrassing, but ultimately authentic and endearing elements of a D/s relationship, like Samuel breaking into a laugh after telling Romy to get on her knees. 

While some have argued that the film doesn’t get explicit enough, for others, it leaves the necessary space for sexual fantasy to flourish.  

“Sex isn’t about two bodies banging up against each other,” Reijn told W Magazine. “That’s why Babygirl circles around it. There are only two quick flashes of sex acts in my movie. The rest—it might be shocking! I find it shocking, too, to go stand in a corner or eat this candy out of my hand. But it’s about the story, the imagination.” 

This less-is-more approach is suggestive of a new era of sex on screen, one that’s more concerned with character development, realistic communication, and the subtle but labyrinthian emotions that underscore every sexual relationship. 

In particular, fantasy and unconventionality play a big part in what younger audiences want to see more of.

"When you look at the top performing movies of 2024, specifically for Gen Z, the majority of them actually do not centre sex or romance in their plotlines," Dr. Alisha J. Hines, research director at UCLA (who published the 'Teens and Screens' report), tells Euronews Culture.

"Many of them, like Wicked, Inside Out 2, Moana 2, and even Dune Part 2 have strong themes of friendship and family, and even mental health and fantasy."

Recent years have also seen the growing influence of intimacy coordinators, which has led to more carefully choreographed sex scenes where performer comfortability is key.  

In a post-MeToo industry that's still reckoning with its crimes, the hope is that more female directors will take the reins and redefine traditionally male-centric erotic cinema to capture the facets of what women want, and how those wants have been warped by societal pressures.

“Women look at things like the male gaze, where we see sex scenes in mainstream film and media that have been directed by men, and they’re not realistic,” Reed Amber, an intimacy educator & sex positive podcaster, tells Euronews Culture. 

“[Sometimes] the performers have been really unhappy. It gives people the wrong idea of not only what to expect, but how to act when you’re intimate with somebody, which ends up leading towards things like dissatisfaction and the orgasm gap.”

Still, steamy sex is far from dead in Hollywood - as many of last year’s best films proved.

From the greasy fornications of Love Lies Bleeding to the masturbatory revelations of Poor Things, these feature LGBTQ+ and non-traditional female characters expressing their sexuality in explicit but truthful ways that enhance the story’s meaning.

"More young people than ever are experimenting with their gender identities and sexual orientation, and traditional romantic and sexual narratives often fail to capture the nuance of their authentic, lived experience," Hines says.

Tackling the taboos of BDSM

A major talking point of Babygirl has been its portrayal of kink - in particular, D/s relationships. It’s a subject that has inspired numerous movies before, sometimes positively (The Duke of Burgundy, Secretary, Dogs Don’t Wear Pants), other times harmfully (Fifty Shades of Grey).

The lure of BDSM on screen has often been its more extreme sexual elements, but this is only part of it. D/s relationships can take many forms, from protection to pain, but are always a consensual exchange of power. Missing, or misunderstanding this is often where movies go wrong.

“I think that Babygirl does an excellent job of portraying two people, new to BDSM/kink, trying to understand and act on their desires,” Dr. Stefani Goerlich, a clinical sexologist and award-winning author, says. 

“Unfortunately, it does an excellent job of showing the risks, dangers, and pitfalls of trying to stumble into kink - without calling them out as such in the film. So the end result is a film that accurately depicts the ways in which people new-to-BDSM can get themselves into trouble (physical and emotional) but it is NOT a positive portrayal of BDSM, because it shows these negative outcomes without critical analysis or discussion of how to do things correctly.” 

Goerlich cites a scene from the film in which Samuel is negotiating the relationship dynamics with Romy, which turns to coercion when he threatens to request a work transfer that could culminate in her losing her career if she doesn’t agree. 

Babygirl also dips its toes into the kink-as-trauma trope, with light mentions of Romy’s childhood in a cult - but what remains admirable throughout is Reijn’s lack of judgement in her storytelling, as she seeks to better understand and destigmatise "shameful" sexual desires.

“A lot of the time, we grow up thinking [BDSM] is scary, or it’s a bunch of old people; it’s whips and chains, it’s painful, it’s dark and dingy uncomfortable dungeons. Luckily, we’re seeing a huge shift in the way that BDSM is being portrayed,” Reed says. 

Goerlich believes that more focus on the “less sexy” aspects of kink are needed. 

“Kink is ALWAYS relational... It's only sometimes sexual. It's entirely possible to be kinky and asexual, or to be in a power exchange relationship that doesn't include penetrative sex,” she says. 

“A movie or TV show that modelled real negotiation, checking in with one another mid-scene, and appropriate aftercare would be revolutionary; not just kinky people who would finally get to see themselves authentically represented, but also vanilla people who can learn a lot about relational communication from their kinky peers.”

Babygirlis out in cinemas now.