When I’d heard that Nicole Kidman hadn’t watched Babygirl back and the first time she’d be watching it would be at the Venice Film Festival premiere, I knew we were going to be in for quite the ride. As the lights went down and the opening credits rolled, the first thing we saw on screen? Kidman’s character panting with pleasure with her husband Jacob, played by Antonio Banderas. And it only gets hotter and spicier from there.

Nicole Kidman plays a powerful CEO, Romy, who engages in a forbidden affair with an alluring and much younger intern, Samuel, played by The Iron Claw’s Harris Dickinson. Romy seems to have it all. A sleek and glamorous job at a robotics firm. A handsome theatre director of a husband and two teenage daughters. A beautiful home in the New York suburbs. But she still feels as though something is missing from her life – in particular her sex life.

As passionate and heady as sex is with her husband Jacob, the opening scene immediately tells the audience that it’s not all what it seems to be on the surface. As soon as Romy has had sex with her husband, we see her run off to another room in the house to masturbate to domination-based pornography. But then she meets Samuel.

Dickinson’s character is suave, confident and sometimes even commanding but there’s also an element of awkwardness and nervousness to him. With longing glances and meetings in basement rooms in the office, the build-up to this affair is packed with tension and anticipation. We see Romy battling with her inner self, debating whether to follow her desires and go down this road with Samuel or attempt to repress her sexual fantasies of domination, but one night in a hotel room and she finally gives in to her sexual desires.

Their affair sees Romy regularly commanded and dominated by Sam, where in one scene Sam orders his boss a pint of milk at a work drinks event as a power play and in another scene, Romy is half-nude drinking milk from a dog bowl in a hotel room while Sam looks on. It’s a story of control, power dynamics and sexuality that may not fit the typical ‘norm’. Kidman is effectively playing two parts: the confident and dominant CEO and the submissive lover. And she succeeds in both, delivering one of her best and most daring performances in years.

The film is directed by Halina Reijn, who made her English-language directorial debut with A24’s satirical horror Bodies Bodies Bodies, which was a critical and commercial success. Reijn has a raw and neo-noir thriller style to this film that means we get to see the undignified reality of this affair, behind all the beauty and glamour. And even though the ending may be a little too neat and clear cut for the film’s messiness, it’s definitely no Hollywood happy ending.

Babygirl brilliantly captures a woman’s erotic experiences without shying away from the jagged edges of these desires and Kidman’s performance will surely be one of the main talking points of awards season.

Babygirl will be released in UK cinemas on 20 December

Images: A24