BASIC INSTINCT

A feminist director takes on the erotic thriller.

- ALEX BARASCH

Reijn says that she's seen "92 Weeks" "like, six thousand times" since she was a teen.

The final day of shooting for "Babygirl," a new erotic thriller, was devoted to a sequence that the film's writer and director, Halina Reijn, had deliberately saved for last. In the movie, which will be released on Christmas, Nicole Kidman plays Romy, the hyper-competent C.E.O. of a robotics company, who feigns pleasure in her marriage and flirts perilously with a younger man at work until he tempts her into a kinky affair. In this scene, Romy and her paramour, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), were alone in a cheap hotel room in Manhattan, attempting to define their new dynamic. The environs were unsavoryReijn had chosen blood-red curtains and carpeting specifically to evoke a womb-but there was a charge in the air. The end of the encounter would be the literal consummation of the couple's mind games: Romy would orgasm.

The lead-up to this climax is long, frankly observed, and, at times, unexpectedly funny, as Samuel haltingly tries to assert dominance. Then something clicks. On set, when the moment of truth arrived, the director of photography, Jasper Wolf, crouched to capture Kidman lying on the floor, on her stomach, as Dickinson loomed over her. The first take was deemed slightly too demure, but Reijn-who turned to directing after establishing herself as one of the Netherlands' most celebrated actresses is practiced in the art of teasing out performances. Her advice to Kidman was cheerfully blunt: "Think of a grizzly bear."