What Christmas present do you get for the woman who has everything? An orgasm. “Babygirl” (2024) stars Nicole Kidman as Romy Mathis, CEO, wife and mother, and she handles everything herself, but she may have found someone who can take that one item off her to do list. An intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), catches her attention when he calms an out of control, aggressive dog. Though Romy is no bitch, she cannot take her eyes off him and is intrigued at his casual, calm way of handling elevated scenarios. She finds herself taking his calls, obeying him and begins an affair, which jeopardizes her personal and professional life. Can she have it all?

If you go into “Babygirl” with no prior knowledge, it is initially hard to figure out who Romy is. She gets introduced naked and having sex with her husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas). After she leaves him, her physicality is that of a younger woman, even a girl, as she lies on her stomach on the floor looking at her laptop. It is harder to figure out how visions of colorful warehouse automation fits into this scene. Afterwards, she is in the bathroom rehearsing a speech before she checks her daughters’ backpacks and talks with Isabel (Esther McGregor, who also has a brief role in “The Room Next Door”) and Nora (Vaughan Reilly) at breakfast. Romy is in control and is keeping every plate spinning. The dog encounter is a brush with death and shocks her out of her daily routine. Pairing death and sex is a little cliché, but it works. Romy has become a bit of a machine, and now she wants to connect with the side of her that is more primal.

Though Samuel calls Romy “Babygirl,” the slang usually means an attractive man, but also can mean soft or a girl who will always be there for you. The title does not quite gel. This movie felt as if it could have easily been titled “Nightbitch” (2024) because when no one is looking, especially at night, Romy lets her freak flag fly. People may leave the movie scratching their head wondering what they saw, but it feels cohesive as if it is an anthology reprise to “Secretary” (2002) though the power lines shift. Samuel occasionally breaks character as the dom, and Romy is not always submissive. They are kind of playing it by ear and going with the flow, but the stakes are high. There is a dissonance between Romy’s public profile and her actions. The film devotes a lot of time to her image as the inspirational leader and face of the company, and she feels shame over her desires, but not enough to stop. She feels a kinship with her older daughter, who takes after her mother. Unlike “Nightbitch,” “Babygirl” does not spell everything out, but there are breadcrumbs sprinkled throughout the narrative that moviegoers can follow.

Jacob is a director working on a stage production of Henrik Ibsen’s play “Hedda Gabler.” Get it! A wife with an unconscious secret world compelled to act in inscrutable ways and has a need for freedom from the confines of marriage! Except Romy has advantages over Hedda: more power, not trapped and can be provocative and lash out when cornered. If Hedda Gabler is a doomed neurotic anti-heroine whose story began long before the first page was written, Romy is not doomed per se though the threat of losing everything hangs over her. When she attends the play’s opening night, Dutch writer and director Rejn does not show anything except Romy’s arrival and exit. “Babygirl” only shows what is important to Romy and excels at conveying her excitement and obsessive tunnel vision in pursuit of her desire. The emotions of the scenes are more important than comprehensiveness, which explains why the needle drops are so good: Robyn’s “Dancin on My Own,” INXS’ “Never Tear Us Apart,” George Michael’s “Father Figure,” a heavy breathing soundtrack from Cristobal Tapia de Veer and electronic music during a rave. Music is more essential to the life of the young. While it feels too reductive to call whatever Romy is going through a midlife crisis, it is, but it is also more.

The clues are dropped in conversations with her subordinate, Esme (Sophie Wilde, the acting powerhouse protagonist in “Talk to Me”), whom Romy unofficially mentors. There is one other Black woman, Hazel (Leslie Silva), who is more of a coach and equal whom Romy socializes with after work. In corporate America, it is a conscious choice, not serendipity, that Romy has more than one Black woman in her life. If you watch “Babygirl” back-to-back with “Nightbitch,” it is a detail that is possible to notice. Romy’s shadow self is not the polished, perfect woman that most people see, and she needs these Black women as a sample to mimic, but her true self is one that she is ashamed of and sees as deviant. Why? Her childhood was rooted in high control religious groups—gurus, communes, cults, which she probably had to distance herself from. Even though she has everything, she does not have the toxic comfort of her origins and does not know how to be normal—normal does not exist. She does not want to renounce her current world. Romy wants to find a way to self-medicate and keep it. There are some sinister, tense moments where she turns on Esme, who becomes an unknowing, potential rival for Samuel’s undivided attention, and shrouds her threat as professional advice. The dynamic is one of veiled resentment: Romy is playing a part while Esme and Hazel are just existing. The difference between Kidman and Amy Adams’ character is that Romy is the unchallenged main character everywhere she goes, including to these Black women. She is a mainstream cult leader, a hypocrite, but also human and embracing some basic truth about herself that she only must hide if she wants to live in both worlds.

While there are no details about Romy’s origin story, Rejin was raised under the anthroposophy religious movement, which believed that the spiritual world is accessible in an intellectual, scientific way. It may explain Romy’s intersecting interest in automation and giving time back to people. Her vision of automation may be related to the ecstatic experience of her unconventional religious origins. The anthroposophy religious movement poses an idea of the balance between good and evil, but also creativity and technology. If you want a better idea of these beliefs, you could check out “Hilma” (2022), which does not convey the practice clearly, but the imagery may be enlightening. Also there is an interesting parallel with “Nightbitch,” Romy’s automation vision and the colorful supermarket shelf of canned goods that the protagonist mother and child will later pass. There is the soothing order of the outside world/fitting in with the ideal image of an appropriate woman with the internal primal threatening to disrupt that world. Films like “Babygirl” and “Nightbitch” find a third path, balance: not submission or an unleashed authentic inner self—again there is no articulation of why the latter is a dangerous option. To achieve balance in these films, a woman needs a safe man—“The Substance” (2024) is a movie without that element and a cautionary tale that does show the dangers of giving in to the primal. Rejin was also part of the Subud spiritual movement which practices a spiritual exercise called Laithan, which involves unpredictable, individualistic physical, vocal and emotional expressions to access a mystical experience. It is possible that the sexual release serves a double purpose.

Samuel is barely a real character other than his youth. His prime directive is to operate outside of the rules, and he is the catalyst to help her come out of the closet. He is how Romy gets her groove back to become the woman who cursed out the establishment for rigging the game against her. While Dickinson is an attractive man and a chameleon of an actor, “Babygirl” depicts Samuel as a bit over his head and seems more like a personality hire. He is kind of the male version of a pixie dream boy, and his threats seem to be part of the fun. Without the dialogue pointing out that Samuel is different from other people and has a gift, it could be chalked up to cinematic convenience to move the story forward, but Samuel could be a Laithan helper assisting people, not just Romy, to learn how to open up and surrender to God, which in this practice is not tied to a specific religion but is a general, independent life force, and if a person feels led to choose a religion, it is optional. It is kind of like Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” really disguising the gospel of Space Jesus out of fear of angering Christians. Both are Christmas movies with their own religious agenda except unlike the sci-fi “Alien” prequel, Rehn’s film works on both levels: as a film about sexual desire for those who know nothing about these practices and as a text that models a spiritual practice in a sensational, provocative way which maybe would anger more mainstream adherents to those less well-known spiritual practices.

Also it is impossible not to notice that it is an insane world where Banderas is playing a character that cannot satisfy his wife, and Dickinson is a credible rival. He is an ideal husband in many ways. Though he has insecure moments and is lacking in the bedroom, which she apparently did not tell him for their entire marriage, he loves his wife and children. The breathing soundtrack will validate whether he has what it takes to bring that third option into the real world.

“Babygirl” will polarize audiences. Some people will reduce it to its titillating surface, and others will be intrigued and want to go deeper. Even if you do not like it, you won’t be bored. Rejn made a gorgeous, riveting, entertaining, well-made, intelligent film that refuses to spoon feed her audience, but demands that they engage their mind and emotion just like her characters. You too can have it all. Avoid it if you hate movies with nudity or sex scenes.