Halina Reijn’s ‘Babygirl’ as homage to past erotic dramas

Back home, Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn is known as an acclaimed stage and film actor, albeit one with a reputation for oversharing. “I was raised by radical hippies, so nobody teaches me boundaries,” she says unapologetically. “I’m just open about everything. That scares people in the Netherlands. It’s like, ‘I don’t need your honesty right now.’” Now her profile can add: gifted writer and director of “Babygirl,” a steamy thriller starring Nicole Kidman as a buttoned-up CEO who stumbles into a perilous affair with a young intern (Harris Dickinson), putting at risk her life with her husband (Antonio Banderas) and daughters. Reijn is still a truth-teller, though. “I am, even if nobody believes it, a prude,” she says, describing a Kidman scene to make her point. “The scene I find most arousing is when she drinks the milk and he’s at the other side of the bar. They don’t even touch.”

You’re a self-declared erotic drama completist. Name some favorites.

I’ve watched all of them. “9½ Weeks.” “Indecent Proposal.” I’d die for them. They made me feel less alone in my dark sexual fantasies. But all the endings, I was always like, “Ugh. That’s boring to me.” I love Paul Verhoeven. He’s my mentor. But “Basic Instinct” is so sexist. And I had so much fun making a movie that plays with all the tropes.

For example?

When Nicole is sitting there and Harris is dancing for her, that’s a direct mirror of Mickey Rourke looking at Kim Basinger dancing in “9½ Weeks.” The club scene? That’s from “Basic Instinct” but with my twist.

Where did you get the idea of using microexpressions — humiliation, exasperation, disdain — to get laughs?

[Bertolt] Brecht. Breaking the fourth wall is an ancient thing, especially in European theater. I told [Nicole] from the start, “My whole movie is about a woman who just can’t be — she thinks she has to perform all these different roles — mother, daughter, wife, leader.” I wanted to use that concept as a metaphor for the whole movie. And Nicole is so good about showing that in a mathematical, technical way.

Harris Dickinson and Nicole Kidman in “Babygirl.”

(Niko Tavernise/A24)

Did you research how to direct a sex scene?

I was in so many of them in my acting career, so I feel very at home. But emotionally intimate scenes can be just as embarrassing as physically intimate scenes. What helps is preparing yourself to the teeth. Have a very clear plan. For example, in the opening orgasm, some of that is filmed without Antonio there because it’s just a closeup of [Nicole]. To make her feel safe, I’d sit very close to her. The thing I hated is when a director is like, “OK, now you guys make love. Just do something.” Which is how I felt as an actress all my life.

What’s a filmmaker’s technique that made you think, “Seriously?”

So a director, very internationally famous, sat in a suit, and we [were] all the way over on the other side of the studio doing intimate scenes, and he’d talk into a microphone. [Laughs]

Talk about the “Babygirl” test screenings.

A lot loved it. But a normal sexual thriller has a moral, and some said they were disappointed that the movie didn’t take anything away from her. They were expecting that the cheater [should] get punished or killed. So we had the report of the test screening, when they tell you, “40% of the people think this, and 30% of the people think that.” A24 found it interesting. But they said, “You don’t have to change one thing.”

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

How did the Dutch react when you directed the comedy horror film “Bodies, Bodies, Bodies”?

I come from radical art-house theater. That’s my image. That’s what I breathe. I did “Instinct,” a super dark art-house film funded by the government fully. And then I go make “Bodies.” My whole country was like, “She’s going to direct a horror movie? What’s she doing?” For me, I had to stretch outside of my safety of Ibsen, Shakespeare, and into a whole different world. I thought A24 was the holy grail of everything, but that wasn’t how it was looked upon in my little, super-tiny, microworld of the Netherlands. It was like, “Traitor!”

And now that Nicole Kidman is winning lead actress awards?

It’s a little bit European, but we tend to really admire anybody who makes it in America — whatever that means. In Venice, when all the reviews started coming out, A24 was like, “Oh, my God, look at this. Look at that.” And I was like, “Is the Dutch newspaper writing anything?” It’s so embarrassing, but I still want to please the motherland.