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Halina Reijn wants to bridge Hollywood’s “orgasm gap.”
“It’s huge! Huge!” the Dutch actress-turned-director exclaims, gesticulating wildly over our Zoom call to discuss her new film, Babygirl. “In Hollywood movies, we still see women having orgasms that are physically just not possible, at least for 99 percent of women!”
The orgasms in Babygirl, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival, it’s safe to say, will be more realistic. And there will be plenty of them. After her U.S. debut, the Gen Z slasher satire Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), Reijn returns to the more erotic tones of her first feature, the 2019 Dutch drama Instinct, which chronicled an illicit relationship between a prison therapist and an incarcerated sex offender.
Babygirl stars Nicole Kidman as a high-powered CEO married to the age-appropriate and undeniably-sexy Jakob (Antonio Banderas) who embarks on a forbidden romance with a much younger intern, played by Triangle of Sadness and Iron Claw star Harris Dickinson. A24, which was behind Bodies Bodies Bodies, and released Instinct in the U.S., is planning a Dec. 20 bow for Babygirl.
Ahead of the film’s Venice premiere, Reijn talked with The Hollywood Reporter about giving a feminist spin on the 1990s erotic thriller, the politics of the post-#MeToo era, and bringing sex back to the movies. “As a consumer, sometimes I just want to see a hot, sexy movie with hot people that turns me on a little bit.”
I really loved your U.S. debut Bodies, Bodies Bodies, but this film seems a lot closer, thematically, to your first Dutch film, Instinct. Does it feel more provocative exploring these themes in a big American context, as opposed to a Dutch arthouse film?
I mean, we’re all human, and we’re all struggling more or less with the same things. But of course, in America, it is a kind of heightened even, because here people are a little more repressed, in my eyes, than in the Netherlands. But for me, what is specific about this film is that it’s really about self-love, whereas Instinct was really about self-destruction, When we were shooting Black Book [in which Reijn co-starred] Paul Verhoeven told me: ‘When you direct, you always have to be answering a question.’ With Instinct, the question was: Why do I do things that I know are bad for me, but I still do them? Why is there a beast inside this civilized person?
With Babygirl, the question was: How can I love all parts of myself? Because I like the parts of myself that are accepted by society, but I detest parts of myself, am embarrassed by parts that aren’t. I wanted to make a movie to tell myself that sex is something that we can celebrate and enjoy. Instead of thinking: ‘Oh, my God, why do I have all these taboo, forbidden fantasies?’ This is really the story of a woman who liberates herself.
How does sexuality and the film’s other themes play out differently in an American context?
Well, first of all, and this is what I found so fun doing Bodies Bodies Bodies, is that everything’s bigger in America. Whether you order a cola or hamburger, when you’re walking down the street, it’s all so much bigger than in Europe. So I really wanted to make a movie with a huge scale. Which is why Nicole Kidman is perfect for the film. Because you don’t get any bigger than her. She plays this very powerful CEO of a robotics company. And the affair that takes place is in the workplace, where, in America, less than in Europe, there’s a real hierarchy and a lot more rules about what’s allowed and what’s not allowed. Which heightens the sense of an affair like this being really forbidden, really taboo.
It’s interesting you mention Verhoeven because it feels like this film is drawing on those 90s erotic thrillers that he helped make famous.
I was incredibly inspired by all the sexual thrillers of the 90s: Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, 9 1/2 Weeks, Indecent Proposal, not only because they entertained me at the time, but also because I felt really seen by them, weirdly, even though they were all directed by men and had a sometimes not-too-friendly view of women. But I felt very seen by those movies because as a woman with my desires, I always felt like an alien. And those movies kind of told me that these darker desires were okay, even though, at the end of the movie, the woman mostly gets punished. This film is my answer, my female answer, to those films. It’s really in conversation with those films and looks with a bit of humor on the male gaze. I’m exploring the issues of power and sex in our current moment, but to have a bit of fun with it too.
How is it different to tell these stories in the post-#MeToo era?
Well, I think we have made a huge jump forward since the 90s as far as feminism and inclusion and all of that, is concerned and that’s all incredibly positive. I think the reason that I’m able to direct now is because of that because there is space for women now. But when I think back about those ’90s films, they were about desire and I don’t think there are a lot of American films that have been made about female desire, female sexuality. I think that’s pretty new, and I think there’s still a lot of fear around that. There is still a huge orgasm gap, huge! It’s gotten better on TV but in movies, in bigger Hollywood movies, we still see women having orgasms that are physically just not possible, at least for 99 percent of women. I wanted to make a huge, super entertaining juice film about sexuality, but be very honest about it.
Those films, the erotic thrillers, you mention, kind of disappeared from the American movie scene.
In cinema, sexuality just disappeared. [Basic Instinct director] Paul Verhoeven is always complaining about that: “Where’s the sex in American films?” Now with Challengers and Saltburn, it’s coming back a little bit, but it had been absent from mainstream cinema for a long time.
It just seemed like we became very scared of sexuality. But I think there’s a general need and a hunger for it – a need to look at sex in an honest way and to see the humor in it. We have all these new rules about consent, which are amazing and super important. But at the same time, we are still animalistic, and we need to still look at that part of ourselves. I think that’s where this urge comes from to make these movies.
As a consumer, sometimes I just want to see a hot, sexy movie with hot people that turns me on a little bit. This isn’t soft porn. We’re really trying to make a layered and interesting movie, but at the same time, we want it to be sexy. In Europe, there were always smaller movies about these subjects, but never these bigger movies. So I welcome it back. I think it’s amazing, and I think it’s joyous to sit in a cinema with 300 people and watch a very sexy movie. I can’t think of anything more fun than that.
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