Babygirl and The Eroticism of Risk

A deep dive into how an affair awakens a hidden self and challenges the limits of vulnerability.

Sex and Style is written by Certified Sexologist and Somatic Sex Coach Sarah Ward. This is intended as general advice. If you’d like a personalized guidance, I’d be honored to connect with you in a discovery session.

Recently my lover and I saw Babygirl, a film written and directed by Halina Reijn where Nicole Kidman plays Romy, a woman who has it all and risks losing it in an illicit affair with a young intern.

Babygirl brings up some pretty big topics—sexual dissatisfaction in long term relationships, anorgasmia, BDSM, kinksters, affairs, older women / younger men dynamics—and they manage to tie it up neatly after an hour 45. It’s real and raw.

In her book The State of Affairs, renown Marriage and Family Therapist Esther Perel suggests that marriages could benefit from borrowing a page from the adulterer’s playbook—specifically, the passion, curiosity and abandon that can thrive in affairs. Babygirl offers an interesting lens on this idea as it explores the complexities of desire, identity, and risk in an forbidden relationship.

Here’s my take on Babygirl, from a Sexologist’s perspective.

Warning: Contains spoilers!

Nicole Kidman as Romy. This gown!

In Babygirl, Nicole Kidman plays Romy, the CEO of a tech company that is leading the charges in AI robot technology. She has a gorgeous husband Jacob (played by Antonio Banderas) and two beautiful daughters. Her wardrobe is exquisite. Her home(s), perfectly curated. She’s the woman you may love to hate. 

Despite the fact that Romy and Jacob have sex regularly 19 years into their marriage, it seems disconnected—and she later reveals she’s never had an orgasm with him, and has been faking it their entire entire relationship.  

Antonio Banderas as Jacob and Nicole Kidman as Romy

The first time we meet Samuel, a new intern, Romy is on the sidewalk outside her office in NYC when a violent dog charges at her. Samuel miraculously calms the dog and saves her from an imminent attack. 

Romy: How'd you get that dog to calm down?

Samuel: I gave it a cookie.

Romy: Do you always have cookies?

Samuel: Why, do you want one?

Samuel (played by Harris Dickinson) is several decades younger, and seems to have a fascination with her. During their first mentor / mentee meeting together, he comes onto her, intuiting that she, this immaculately put together business mogul, has a kink. “I think you like to be told what to do,” he says. As it would happen, he’s right. 

Nicole Kidman as Romy and Harris Dickinson as Samuel in their first erotic encounter

She took notice of Samuel after the dog incident and developed an infatuation with him, watching him interact with the other staff members; finding his tie after a company party; smelling it and putting it deep into her mouth.

At a company happy hour, Romy is delivered a tall glass of milk that she didn’t order. She suspects that it came from Samuel, so she swallows it in one sitting, as he pauses to watch her drink every last drop. As she leaves, he whispers, “Good girl.” And they’re off to the races. 

They begin a kinky affair, full of endearingly awkward moments. It becomes clear that neither of them have done this before and are learning the dance steps, clumsily at best. 

In their first encounter in a dirty hotel room, he commands her to get down on all fours at his feet, and crawl towards him, then eat a candy out of his open hand. The wild dog he tamed earlier has been replaced by a burgeoning wild woman instead. 

The scene escalates to Romy lying facedown on the floor of this hotel as he stimulates her sexually. The focus is on her face and everything falls out of focus in the background, so it isn’t clear what he’s doing until she gasps, “I don’t want to pee!” 

Ah: G-spot stimulation.

For vulva owners, stimulation of the g-spot (located a few inches inside the vaginal canal on the anterior side—underneath the belly button) is close to the bladder, and can make them feel like they’re going to pee. This is the sensation that rises just before squirting. 

Their interactions are messy, raw, desperate, hungry, with reservoirs of deep shame. The intimacy is palpable.

The one scene that bothers me happens near the end of the film. The lovers meet in the same secluded room they’d met initially for their first mentor meeting (not her very visible, glass-walled office). He brings up consent, and she mocks him: “What, did you find that in a library?” He coerces her to say, “I’ll do anything you ask me to,” while dangling over her that unless she does, he’ll go talk to someone at the company and ask to be transferred to another department. They would launch an investigation to discover the reasons behind his decision, and the affair would be found out.

This scene seems to cross a line into something darker. Consent is an integral part of BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism), a practice that allows all players to retain their personal autonomy. But here, there’s nothing consensual about this. Samuel knows he can ruin her and plays this card to exploit that power, using her career and family as leverage to gain more control.

This is no longer consensual kink; it’s coercive manipulation.

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Babygirl feels real and raw.

The marital bed death. Her apprehension to reveal her kinky, erotic side—then feeling resentful and angry when her husband doesn’t actually know her. In one scene, Banderas comes onto her in bed and she hides under the covers, shyly saying that she’ll have sex with him—but only if she can watch porn at the same time. It seems apropos that she hide underneath the sheets to make this request. She’s kept her hunger under wraps all these years. 

The risk is to show who we are and what we desire to the people we love the most.

As someone who’s been in a long-term marriage, I can’t help but relate to Romy’s struggle. I, too, felt the temptation to hide my eroticism, to keep it tucked away. But Babygirl reminds us of an insidious danger—how suppressing desire, rather than sharing it out in the open where it can breathe and multiply, can lead to a kind of bed death in relationships. The risk of self-exposure, terrifying as it might be, is where the magic happens.

It’s a risk to be known; to be seen. There is a temptation to play it safe. But the paradox is that the mess is where the magic happens. It feels antithetical to open when there is fear. So, we resist. We try to self-protect and play it safe, and then we wonder where the spark went. 

Hint: it’s in the vulnerability. In the risky self-disclosure. It feels like exposure is akin to death. But it’s actually where you come to life. 

What is so appealing about having an affair?

Particularly for a woman who is so put together in every area of her life—doting mother, beautiful wife, brilliant businesswoman, the very epitome of perfection—Romy’s escape into her affair becomes a secret place where her desires matter more than anyone else’s—for once.

In the transactional sex that she has with her husband, we sense that she’s become erotically stunted. And in this affair, suddenly she can take flight. Romy is mapping anew her erotic terrain.

The infidelity is a space for her to play out the dark fantasies that she has kept from her husband. Where fantasies can be breathed to life, without risking what her husband will think of her if she reveals herself to him.

Curiously, Romy is aware of everything she stands to lose if she were to invite her husband into her erotic landscape—which seems to prevent her from doing so.

And yet, this is the very kink that she plays out with Samuel. By taking a lover, not only does she break marriage vows, but corporate mandates, too. She stands to lose everything. The risk is the reward. And yet, instead of causing her to pump the brakes, she hits the gas instead. It infuses their infatuation with even more fire.

We see Romy desperate for Samuel: their love is a drug. Though he doesn’t seem to share the same attachment to her. As Esther Perel muses in The State of Affairs:

“The thing she’s really afraid to lose is not him—it’s the part of herself he’s awakened.”

She continues, “Sometimes, when we seek the gaze of another, it isn't our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become. We are not looking for another lover so much as another version of ourselves. Mexican essayist Octavio Paz describes eroticism as a thirst for otherness. So often, the most intoxicating other that people discover in the affair is not a new partner; it's a new self.”

In the end, Romy’s affair isn’t just about seeking a new lover—it’s about unearthing a new version of herself. In Babygirl, the eroticism of her affair acts as a mirror, allowing her to see desires and facets of herself in a way her marriage had obscured.

Perhaps that’s the most dangerous thing of all: not the affair itself, but the version of ourselves we risk losing when we don’t let our desires be known.

Sex and Style is written by Certified Sexologist, Somatic Sex and Relationship Coach and Wardrobe Stylist, Sarah Ward. She spent the last 20 years studying human sexuality and is certified in the VITA™ Methodology with Layla Martin and as an Erotic Blueprints™ Coach with Jaiya. For personalized support, schedule a free discovery call with Sarah.

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