At this point, visits from Nicole Kidman to the Venice Film Festival to present films about sex and forbidden lusts have become a custom. In 1999 he presented here ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece filled with scenes of orgies that reflected the amorality of the rich, and in which his character put an end to the story by telling the Tom Cruise an unforgettable phrase: “There is something very important that we need to do as soon as possible: fuck”; In 2004 he returned to the festival to promote ‘Reincarnation’a Jonathan Glazer film as magnificent as it was misunderstood in which she played a woman who falls feverishly in love with a boy who claims to be a revived version of the man whose death left her a widow.
In ‘Babygirl’the film that was presented today in competition at the festival, features scenes in which, for example, he masturbates with extreme pleasure while watching porn on the Internet or gives pleasure to his sexual partner by crawling on the floor to stick his nose in a small plate full of milk.
“It’s a story about “sex, desire, marriage, truth, power and consent”the Australian actress said today at the festival about the film. “It is told through a woman’s eyes, and in my opinion that is what makes it so unique, and why telling it was so liberating for me.”
Directed by the Dutch Halina Reijn -known mainly for her previous work, the notable crime comedy ‘Muertes, Muertes, Muertes’ (2022)-, tells the story of a directive of something rank in a robotics company that puts her career, her husband (Antonio Banderas) and her two daughters at risk when she embarks on a forbidden romance with an intern at her company.
And in the process, as he peppers his own footage with high-voltage sexual scenes, he raises questions that are extremely pertinent in the Post-MeToo World with uneven effectiveness: on the one hand, it is absorbing in questioning that postulate defended by a part of the feminism According to which the pillar of capitalism is an exclusively economic structure patriarchal; on the other hand, he puts many traps to the viewer in order to argue that, in order to achieve power, women must give up the satisfaction of their sexual desire. In any case, it is a film more likely to inspire edifying conversations than to generate controversy. ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ was absurdly criticized in Venice, and ‘Reincarnation’ even received fierce boos. ‘Babygirl’, on the other hand, may even win an award.
The first job that the Mexican Alfonso Cuaron presented after winning the Golden Lion at this festival thanks to ‘Roma’ (2018) -six years later, no less- also includes passionate sex scenes although, of course, it does not use them to fuel debates connected with the ‘zeitgeist’ but mainly to desperately display their own audacity. Seven-episode miniseries produced by Apple TV, ‘Observed’ stars Cate Blanchett You play the role of an acclaimed documentary filmmaker who sees her career and family life with her wealthy husband and troubled son falter after the publication of a book that reveals a terrible secret about her past; it seems that an elderly widower wants revenge on her, and it is not entirely clear why. And, throughout its six long hours of footage, this adaptation of the novel of the same name by Renée Knight tries to convince us to what extent the mechanisms of narration Facts can become a weapon to manipulate us and distance us from the truth, and in the meantime, they do not hesitate to set all kinds of traps for us in order to subject us to precisely that kind of handling.
Cuarón’s story progresses by alternating two timelines: one recreates the events narrated in the mysterious book that the protagonist receives, and the other contemplates the havoc they cause in the present time; both are illustrated by a irritating voice-over which is at times confusing, at times redundant, and often laughable. Its omnipresence is a good part of what explains the infallible soporific capacity of a fiction that perhaps could have been effective whether it were a two-hour feature film or several television seasons, but whose current format condemns it to category of fiasco. “I don’t know how to direct television,” Cuarón confessed while presenting ‘Observed’ in Venice. “And at this point in my life I think it’s too late to learn how to do it.” That’s it.