In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
In “Babygirl,” Nicole Kidman plays Romy, a woman who seems to have it all: a successful New York career as the chief executive of a robotics company, a great husband and beautiful children. But beneath the surface, she has a desire to be dominated. She’s drawn into an affair with an office intern who fulfills that desire, and threatens to topple her house of cards.
In this sequence, Romy has agreed to meet that intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), at a hotel for an encounter. What that will entail, neither of them know, and the scene has them fumbling their way through the early stages of a dominant/submissive relationship, figuring out what they want right in the moment. It involves tightrope-walking performances from both Kidman and Dickinson.
“For this scene specifically, we really asked the actors to show that they are performing,” the film’s writer and director, Halina Reijn, said in her narration. “So they are constantly going in and out of their character.”
Reijn said that she was telling this story because she felt that “total freedom and an actual liberation means that we should connect to our inner animalistic side.”
She concluded by saying, “My movie is a cautionary tale of what happens when you deny that you have a darker side within you.”
Read the “Babygirl” review.
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