Babygirl

 So I spent last night with "Babygirl",one of those films I kept meaning to watch last year but never found the time. Maybe that was for a reason. I finally saw it - and once again, I had raised the bar high, only to find the film didn’t even try to jump.

I once read a book that stayed with me somehow - Marthe Blau’s "In His Hands". A lawyer, sharp and competent, slowly gives herself over to a colleague - not just sexually, but emotionally. There’s no mutuality, no balance. He draws out something that was always there in her - a desire to submit, to be controlled - but twists it into manipulation. She ends up diminished, unfulfilled, and painfully aware that what she gave up wasn’t just power, but agency. That story captured something complex: how sadomasochistic tendencies often serve a deeper emotional mechanism. The need to hand over control, to be told what to do, isn’t just about pleasure - it’s about shifting responsibility away from the self. Let someone else decide. Let someone else lead. It’s escape, not just desire.

"Babygirl" tries to move in that territory, but only grazes the surface. We meet Romy, a powerful CEO, composed, emotionally distant. But something is clearly missing in her carefully curated world. She doesn’t suddenly become submissive; it’s more like a door finally cracks open. That need was always there. What she finds in Samuel, her much younger intern, isn’t just lust or risk - it’s the chance to finally be undone. When he tells her, bluntly, “I think you like to be told what to do,” it isn’t shocking. It’s confirmation.

And from there, it shifts. She becomes obedient. Soft. Dependent. She starts chasing him. There’s something uncomfortable, even painful, about watching a woman of her stature unravel like that - not through mutual surrender, but through quiet erosion. The dynamic between them never feels like a dance, it feels like a slow fade.

It reminded me of another film that explored these tensions far better -"Unfaithful" (2002). There, too, a woman steps out of her marriage not just for sex, but for intensity. For the loss of control. The chaos she invites in is tragic, but believable. Because it stems from a real emotional fracture. Something in her life was silent, and she wanted to hear herself scream again.

"Babygirl", in contrast, tries to wrap everything up in a twist: the assistant pulls the strings behind the scenes, uses the intern to manipulate Romy, and earns herself a promotion. The husband, conveniently, discovers how to satisfy his wife sexually. The intern ends up alone with a dog in a hotel room. On paper, it might look clever: a reversal, a who-played-whom mind game. But it feels forced. Emotionally disconnected. Because none of it feels like the real consequence of what came before.

And most importantly: the desire to be dominated, to surrender, to be objectified even - it doesn’t just resolve itself through a better sex life or a clever plot twist. That mindset is rooted in deeper emotional structures. It requires recognition, understanding, and often a reckoning. "Babygirl" puts on the aesthetics of power play, but not the weight of it. It treats submission like a role, something one can try on and discard. But it doesn’t work that way.

What could have been a raw, provocative, uncomfortable look at gender, dominance, agency, and longing ends up as a sleek little fable with all the rough edges polished off. A complex story reduced to a convenient ending.

And then there’s the poster.

"A complete knockout", "Utterly thrilling" "The hottest erotic thriller in ages". 

Honestly, the quotes read like they belong to a completely different film - or a parody of film marketing altogether. It’s as if someone took all the buzzwords from the back of a DVD in 2003 and pasted them over a psychological sketch that barely holds together. It’s not that the film is bad - it just never earns those stars, or that noise

I  wanted discomfort, ambiguity, and psychological truth.

I got symmetry dressed up as closure, but hollow underneath.