Nicole Kidman said she felt "exposed and vulnerable" as erotic thriller Babygirl premiered at the Venice Film Festival Friday, with the veteran actor pushing herself far from her comfort zone. Nicole Kidman plays Romy, a high-powered New York CEO who embarks on a torrid, sado-masochistic affair with a new company intern, played by Harris Dickinson, risking her marriage to her husband (Antonio Banderas) and family life. An orgasm both opens and ends the film, with a roller-coaster of frenzied desire and psychological manipulation in between, leaving the viewer in a heightened state of anticipation during the no-holds-barred film.
"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," Nicole Kidman told a press conference ahead of the premiere. "Right now we're all a bit nervous."
Fearless
One of 21 films in the main competition for the Golden Lion prize, Babygirl is the third film for Dutch director Halina Reijn, who also wrote the script.
The study of one woman's sexual desire, it also explores power relationships - and turns some of them on their head in surprising ways.
Early reviews were mostly positive, with Variety calling Kidman "fearless" in the film that captures "something genuine about women's erotic experience in the age of control" and IndieWire calling the film a "sexy, darkly funny, and bold piece of work".
The film manages to subvert the seemingly dated erotic genre, whose heyday in the 1980s and 90s produced films such as 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," said Reijn.
That was the interest for Nicole Kidman, who in 1999 delved into the genre with her then-husband Tom Cruise in Stanley Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut, similarly an in-depth look at sexuality and the human psyche.
"I want to examine human beings," Nicole Kidman said 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 said.
Last year's Golden Lion award went to a film unabashedly exploring themes of self-identity and sexuality - Poor Creatures from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos.
In that feminist reworking 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.
Self-love
Nicole Kidman - who wore a two-tone Schiaparelli gown on the red carpet ahead of the screening - said Babygirl also fit her agenda to promote female directors. She said she wanted to "put my weight behind a lot of women now in terms of directors, to try to change the ratio".
The gap between men and women directors in film festivals has narrowed in recent years amid more attention to gender parity, but women directors are still underrepresented.
This year, Reijn is one of seven women directors in the main competition of 21 films.
Having a woman at the helm of Babygirl was essential, said Nicole 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," Nicole Kidman said.
She acknowledged that nudity - of which there is relatively little in the film - was not a primary 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," Nicole Kidman said.
Ultimately, Reijn said the film is about the question: "Can I love myself in all my different layers?" "And I hope it will function as a tribute to self-love and liberation."
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