Offscreen Central is horrified by the fires devastating Southern California. As much of our team is based in LA, it is hard for us to go on business as usual. If you are in any of the impacted areas, please stay and stay up to date with precautions needed in your area. The Watch Duty app is a great resource for mapping evacuation updates and orders. The DSA have put together an emergency resource guide for those in the Los Angeles county. The guide includes where to track evacuation warnings, nearby shelter locations and essentials for survival kits.

While we will be dropping work again after a short break, we are hoping to highlight someone in need with each piece dropped. The Jones family lost everything due to the Eaton Fire. If you can make a small donation, here is their GoFundMe.

Nicole Kidman is a star. Throughout her decades in Hollywood, she has been in blockbusters, independent film, worked in television. Spanning her 40 year acting career, Kidman has embodied a host of characters from real-life figures to comic book psychiatrists, obsessive television personalities to witches, villains, heroines, and everyone in between. In Haline Reijn’s Babygirl, Kidman gives an audacious performance grounded in desire, exploration, and humanity. Babygirl follows Romy, the CEO of a tech company which focuses on automation. Married for almost 20 years, Romy’s life seems perfect. A loving husband, two thriving children, a successful business where she stands out in a male-dominated field. She is well-liked and extremely respected. But, when she meets intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson), her world is turned upside down. 

Romy is complicated. Much like other Gen X counterparts, she is equal parts driven and nihilistic, traits which can isolate her from the Gen Z interns beginning to populate her workspace. Where Gen Z nihilism leads to community, exploration of boundaries, and a more laissez-faire attitude at work, Gen X nihilism has lead to isolation. Both generations grew up in expanding individualism and consumerism. But the access to the internet and almost instantaneous information from a young age also separates the generations. Where Gen X were adults when they realized the world would let them down, Gen Z was raised by disappointment and disenfranchisement. Taking those two generations and parsing it down to these characters, you quickly see how Romy and Samuel hold such similar ideas by deviate in how they process the world around them. It is this divide, this friction where Kidman leans into the discomfort Romy has with this confrontation. 

Kidman navigates these generational divides with such precision. In lesser hands, Romy’s discomposure would be seen as a weakness. Rather, Kidman sees this confrontation as an opportunity for deep exploration. What does it mean to have your previously tightly held beliefs interrogated? What are boundaries? How do those definitions change internally and interpersonally? It is a daring curiosity from Kidman which becomes so alluring. 

The film alludes to Romy’s history of spending her youth on a commune. Exposed to the opposite of corporate life. Yet, as a product of her generation and society, Romy focused more on breaking glass ceilings. The trajectory for powerful women was not in inward exploration, but in outward, upward mobility. Romy has a meticulous nature about her. Working in robotics, one would assume Romy is uptight, aloof. Kidman never ventures into that territory. Instead, we see her engaging with her family, watching her husband’s play, feeling things. But her feelings are shrouded so much in shame. Kidman certainly unveils Romy’s vulnerabilities, doing so in a way that never feels like a betrayal or judgment of Romy.  Romy’s guardedness, her headstrong nature have been survival mechanisms. They’ve afforded her to work in an industry which underestimates her, with people who attempt to undermine her based solely on her gender. This facet of Romy’s life feels like a fuel for Kidman. As an actor, she has been unafraid to try anything, working with industry giants and first time filmmakers. And as she became an “actress of a certain age,” Kidman moved into producing, creating work for herself and other actresses past the ingenue phase. It is that passion, that drive which Kidman and Romy share. 

What also makes Kidman’s performance in Babygirl so daring are the host of emotional depths she is willing to go. Watching Romy go from hedonistic passion, dancing at a rave to return home, immediately tapping into her innate maternal care for her daughter demonstrates the layers Kidman has given to this character. As Romy engages in her affair with Samuel, Kidman never shames Romy for her actions, rather, she displays her internal conflict. She feels shame not just for her affair, but more deeply that shame is greatly associated with her desires, her sexuality. A woman who grew up in the 1980s, with aerobics and spandex, to the 1990s and early 2000s of the hyperfixation of diets and body image. It is this web of shame and guilt which has anchored so much of how Romy views herself, that untangling it, dispelling it, creates a cascade of other emotions. 

It is also moving to see an actor like Kidman navigate the totality of what womanhood can be. What it means to be a partner. What it means to have a career, to be a leader. What it means to be a mother. While Kidman’s performance in an isolated view outstanding, it is what she gives to her fellow actors in the film that demonstrates Kidman has always been working at an elevated level. Kidman and Dickinson feel so frenetic together. As they explore passion, dominance, boundaries, power, you feel a palpable energy. With Antonio Banderas, there is a longevity baked into their interactions. They feel like they have always known each other, just natural partners. Her scenes with Sophie Wilde, an assistant working for Romy, striving for that same upward mobility, give texture to what boundaries are, what power is. The power dynamics of employer-employee, the boundary crossings that come in a work place that acts like “family.” Kidman and Wilde walk that delicate tightrope together. And then the thorny and extraordinary mother-daughter relationship, especially between Romy and Isabel (Esther McGregor). Kidman understands that electric and sometimes volatile power between mother and daughter. The way she can balance Romy as a carer, sometimes bordering on control, and Romy beginning to witness her daughter as a young woman. There is a scene towards the end of the film where Kidman and McGregor are so vulnerable with one another, recognizing strength and humanness in each other. It is these interactions, this work from this ensemble which also display Kidman’s exceptional performance.

Babygirl is yet another instance of Kidman’s daring curiosity as an actor. Her performance feels so effortless, every choice feels purposeful. Even just the face Kidman makes while reading a text or her raise of an eyebrow as she scans a room give so much depth to who Romy is and how she moves through the world. Kidman has always been fearless in her art, and it can be easy overlook a performance when the actor is unafraid to explore anything. It is why this performance in Babygirl should be in consideration. It elevates the craft in an exciting and exhilarating way. It is yet another performance which proves Kidman truly is one of the best in the game. 

Babygirl is currently playing in theaters.
You can find our review of the film here.