I watched Babygirl the way God (A24) intended—through some grainy, shaky, likely–illegal cam coverage. The latest entry in A24’s unhinged female protagonist cinematic universe, Babygirl isn’t a girlboss redemption arc or a carefully crafted feminist statement. It’s about a woman in free fall, clinging to whatever scraps of control and validation she can find. If the 2010s gave us the “cool girl” (Gone Girl) and 2020 gave us “girlboss” (Promising Young Woman), we are now deep into feral goblin woman cinema, where the messiness is not just emotional but physical, visceral, and deeply uncomfortable.
And yet, despite its chaos, Babygirl still understands something fundamental: women, no matter how miserable or reckless, always have to perform. They perform for men, for their jobs, for the expectations placed upon them—and, most tragically, for themselves. But what happens when that performance stops? What happens when a woman decides that instead of gracefully unraveling, she’s just going to fall apart completely?
In Babygirl (2024), Nicole Kidman plays Romy, a high–powered executive who has mastered the art of looking effortlessly in control: her career is pristine, her Botox is working overtime, and her marriage to Jacob (Antonio Banderas) is the kind of polished, respectable arrangement that screams “joint tax benefits” more than passion.
But then there’s Samuel (Harris Dickinson)—her young, dangerously self–assured intern who moves through the world with the kind of confidence that only a twenty–something man who just discovered Derrida can have. He has the “I read Sylvia Plath once and now I ruin women’s lives” energy of a walking red flag. And instead of running in the opposite direction, Romy does what every woman teetering on the edge of a crisis absolutely should not do: She falls head over heels.
What starts as a fleeting indulgence quickly turns into a self–sabotage speed run, complete with corporate power struggles, late–night existential crises, and her creeping realization that she might not be in control of the situation—or herself—at all. Babygirl is not just a movie about bad choices; it’s about the seductive thrill of watching a woman who’s spent her entire life being careful decide, for once, to burn it all down.
There is a specific type of insufferable man that indie cinema has spent the past decade trying to convince us is charming. If Timothée Chalamet in Lady Bird is the Manic Pixie Fuckboy (MPF) prototype, Samuel in Babygirl is the full–fledged monster that blueprint created.
He is not cool or mysterious. He is not even charming in the fake–intellectual way that sad boy protagonists usually are. He is deeply awkward, not in any endearing way—more like the kind of guy who corners you at a party to talk about Pulp Fiction and tells you he “just gets women better than other men do.” If Samuel had been played by someone like Adam Driver, film bros would be calling him “profound” instead of pathetic. Instead, Babygirl recognizes him for what he is: a guy who is exactly as deep as you let him be.
Samuel is what happens when men realize that weaponized awkwardness can be just as manipulative as confidence. He doesn’t win Romy over with swagger or charm—he wins her over by letting her think she’s the one in control. He isn’t a threat; he’s just a deeply sensitive, misunderstood guy who happens to be conveniently available at a time when she’s feeling vulnerable.
Hollywood has been obsessed with messy women for a while, but Babygirl marks a shift in how they’re presented. There was a time when female characters could be chaotic, but their destruction had to serve a clear purpose—think of how Gone Girl made Amy’s unraveling razor–sharp and intentional, or how Promising Young Woman built Cassie’s self–destruction around a carefully plotted revenge arc. Even in their messiness, these women were still in control.
But something has changed. Babygirl follows a different lineage, one that began with Lady Bird, moved through Zola, took a violent detour with Pearl, and has now reached its inevitable conclusion: a protagonist whose downward spiral isn’t a tool or a plan—it’s just happening, raw and unfiltered. Romy isn’t scheming or self–mythologizing; she’s reacting, making decisions that are far more desperate than they are calculated.
That’s what makes the film so deeply uncomfortable. We usually don’t let female protagonists be truly messy without demanding that their downfall be tragic or their redemption be earned. When men are disasters on screen—BoJack Horseman, Kendall Roy, Patrick Bateman—we call them complex. When women spiral, we call them unstable.
You couldn’t even handle Lady Bird. Let’s be real—people don’t actually want complex female characters.
There’s something uniquely uncomfortable about watching a woman drink milk on screen. It shouldn’t be disturbing. It should be neutral, even comforting—milk is primal, nourishing, a direct tether to childhood. But in Babygirl, the milk scene isn’t about comfort at all. It’s about control.
They’re out at a restaurant and Samuel orders it for Romy without asking. A small, almost laughable thing—a glass of milk, slid across the table like a dare. She could refuse it. She doesn’t. She drinks. And when she does, he calls her good girl. If there is one moment that distills everything about Babygirl—the power games, the self–destruction, the unspoken but undeniable shift in agency—it’s this one. Romy, a woman who has spent her entire life being in charge, dictates multimillion–dollar deals and keeps her marriage in crisp, well–manicured order, takes the milk and drinks it. It’s not just submission—it’s an act that acknowledges she is no longer running the show.
If this were a man drinking a glass of whiskey in a dimly lit bar, we’d be calling it a symbol of his brooding depth. If Samuel had been the one downing the milk, it would be a quietly genius nod to his repression and wounded masculinity. But because it’s a woman, and because she is drinking something as ridiculous and childish as milk, the scene lands differently. It is unsettling in a way that’s hard to articulate.
This is not an intimate moment. It is not a moment of comfort or seduction. It is humiliating in a way that is too subtle to fight back against. And Romy, who has spent a lifetime learning how to control a room, how to smile at the right people, how to hold her own against powerful men, lets it happen anyway.
If Babygirl is a film about power, control, and the slow unraveling of a woman who thought she was untouchable, then this is the moment where the thread is pulled.
Hollywood has recently decided that older women can have sex on screen again—but only if it’s done correctly. You can have an age gap romance, but it has to be aspirational. It has to be tidy. The woman has to be confident, self–assured, and in control.
This is the Lonely Planet or Laura Dern Effect: You can have an age–gap relationship, but it has to be sanitized, aesthetically pleasing, and palatable to a younger audience. Anne Hathaway in The Idea of You gets to have a perfect, well–dressed romance with a younger pop star because it still fits within the bounds of what we want female desire to look like—elegant, tasteful, completely devoid of desperation. Romy is not that.
She is not a cool cougar. She is not a poised, powerfully sensual woman in control. She is messy, desperate, aware of her decline, and making reckless choices just to feel something. And that’s what makes Babygirl radical. It doesn’t sell older women’s desire as inherently sexy or empowering—sometimes, it’s ugly. Sometimes, it’s humiliating, selfish, and driven by loneliness rather than confidence.
Hollywood loves older women with younger men—so long as they’re self–assured, well–adjusted, and still “acceptable.” But it resists women like Romy: unraveling, uncertain, and just barely holding herself together.
This is why Babygirl feels radical—it doesn’t sanitize female desire. It doesn’t pretend that power and control are always clear–cut. And this is why Romy’s affair feels so different from Hollywood’s other attempts to “progressively” portray age gap relationships. Babygirl understands that older women’s desire doesn’t always fit into the carefully curated feminist framework we want it to.
Sometimes, it’s about grief.
Sometimes, it’s about loss.
Sometimes, it’s about making one bad decision because you don’t know how else to feel alive.
But that’s what makes Babygirl interesting. Because it doesn’t ask us to approve of Romy’s choices. It doesn’t pretend they’re good for her, or that they should be empowering, or that they are anything but what they are—a woman making a bad decision because, for once, she wants to.
And that, more than anything, is what makes people uncomfortable. Not just the age gap, not just the power imbalance, but the sheer audacity of a woman refusing to be graceful in her own decline. Hollywood gives us stories where older women reclaim their desire on safe, palatable terms. Babygirl dares to show what it actually looks like: messy, selfish, raw. A woman unmaking herself, not for love, not for reinvention, but for the simple, inconvenient pleasure of wanting.
