Babygirl director Halina Reijn is defending the 29-year age gap between her lead actors, Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson.
In an interview with W Magazine published on Wednesday, December 25, Reijn was asked about adding to the pantheon of romantic movies released this year that feature an older woman and a younger man. (Kidman herself starred in Netflix’s A Family Affair with Zac Efron as her love interest, while Anne Hathaway swooned over Nicholas Galitzine in The Idea of You.)
“If we see a movie where the male actor is the same age as the female actor, we find that odd. Which is insane. It should completely be normalized that the age gaps switch and that women have different relationships,” Reijn said. “We’re not trapped in a box anymore. We internalize the male gaze, we internalize patriarchy, and we need to free ourselves from it. It’s really hard.”
In Babygirl, Kidman, 57, plays a CEO who begins a steamy affair with a young intern played by Dickinson, 28.
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Babygirl premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in August and Kidman has received critical acclaim for her performance.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published earlier this month, the Oscar winner recalled being shocked by one early review of the film.
“I think it’s very releasing, this film. I hope it is,” she said. “I’ve had some people say it’s the most disturbing film they’ve ever seen, which I’m like, ‘Oh no, I’m so sorry.’”
For her part, Kidman relished the opportunity to play an older woman who embraced her sensual side.
“A lot of times women are discarded at a certain period of their career as a sexual being. So, it was really beautiful to be seen in this way,” the Oscar winner told THR. “From the minute I read it, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is a voice I haven’t seen, this is a place that I haven’t been, I don’t think audiences have been.’ My character has reached a stage where she’s got all this power, but she’s not sure who she is, what she wants, what she desires, even though she seems to have it all. And I think that’s really relatable.”
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Kidman also admitted that she felt it was a “raw and dangerous” film to make.
“I couldn’t believe they were giving us the money to make it,” she said, in part. “The sexuality of it. That it wasn’t written for a 20-year-old. It wasn’t written even for a 30-year-old.”
Kidman’s costar, Dickinson, previously spoke about filming sex scenes with the legendary actress.
“We’d have a discussion with the intimacy coordinator and then Nicole and I kind of did our own thing with it once we set the parameters of what we were both comfortable with,” he told Variety in October. “The intimacy coordinator is saying, ‘What are you comfortable with, what do you want as a director, what are you comfortable doing from that vision?’ They’re facilitating that and doing it very delicately without interrupting the actual scene.”
