By GOLDEN SAULO*

Commentary on Halina Reijn's film, currently showing in cinemas

The American dream has gained elements: in addition to the individual rise to success, which is possible in a land of freedom, it is necessary to assume commitments to social responsibility, such as equity and the promotion of diversity. It is not enough to reach the top; it is important to show that one is open to including subordinates in one's adventure.

Only then will there be a true hero's journey, winning and inclusion, in which public life mirrors a private life of examples. In the film Baby girl, the protagonist will have to assimilate another layer, which is her uncontrollable intimate life. Will she be able to place this layer as a conquest of territory, as a force for progress?

The CEO of a robotics company, Romy (Nicole Kidmann), is the figure in question, who aims to balance the two facets of America in one person: someone who works for the family and belongs to the North American tradition of photos with husband and daughters during Christmas, as well as someone who adopts the virtues of the corporate world, that is, high productivity, competitiveness, the demonstration of strength and care with the image of power.

There is already a great allusion in her name. When asked by an employee where such a different nickname had come from, whether it was from a European country, Romy said that she had been raised in an alternative community. We can imagine her parents dressed in esoteric style in the 1960s, honoring the little girl with something spiritualist and oriental.

And now she's an AI CEO. Not bad. It's the same opinion as figures like Mark Fisher in The ghosts of my life: the desires of the counterculture have been captured and distorted by neoliberalism, in which the individual expands fully, with nothing left to deprive him or even a state to counter his spirit. The final episode of the series Mad Men (2007-2015, by Matthew Weiner) pointed out to us… She is a mad woman, One self-made woman.

Neoliberalism does indeed allow women to gain positions of power, as feminism in the 1960s advocated and which Romy's mother probably dealt with on her farm, perhaps by going to protests in San Francisco. Couldn't her daughter be the fulfillment of that demand? Factually, yes, but there is a cynical achievement in this whole panel. The superstructure that was fought against in the 1970s has intensified, in which the authoritarianism of the State falls, but also its protection of social welfare, through exploitation, and now everyone is included in the free competition for capital and power, and there are no more borders for the individual as long as he earns enough for his expansion.

There is only one territory that cannot be conquered by means of currency: the drive, the intimate desire. Deep within the soul there can still reside that which is not represented by conventions, by hierarchies and even by fair guidelines. In Romy there is an unfulfilled desire to enjoy herself in the lowest form, to have sex like a bitch. Why not?

On the one hand, she is a respected woman, mother of two grown daughters and has a loving partner who is also an attentive father and a prominent figure in his field, a role model for other women competing for advancement. On the other hand, she has a limit, which is that she cannot satisfy her most primary desire, an internal debauchery that accompanies her throughout her life.

Then comes the intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a bold, daring young man, but without the classic hint of ambition. He is a gentle anarchist: he makes friends with everyone, gets along well with his bosses, but also has the spirit of someone who doesn't really connect with institutions. Samuel is capable of demanding rights, of believing that laws must be followed, but at the same time, he doesn't see any point in etiquette or in formally cultivating a public image.

It could be a representative of Gen Z that Silicon Valley tries hard to understand: someone who is capable of giving themselves over to a job without believing in it and giving their soul to it. Flexibility is such a strong motto that each company can be a door to open temporarily. There are no definitive ties, there are no roots to be created.

Through this gap in presence, Samuel feels free to fulfill desires as they are, without fixed conventions, and so he will do so in a very unorthodox way with Romy. The name refers to the prophet Samuel, the last before the definitive monarchy of Israel (and what will be the contemporary “monarchy” that he announces?) While Jacob (Antonio Banderas), Romy’s husband, is the representative of the family and is only at the beginning of the entire process that will create Israel… “Your vision is outdated,” Samuel tells Jacob in one of the film’s high points, when the love triangle clashes.

In the movie Theorem (1968), by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, a young man appears in a bourgeois house and seduces every member of the household, to the point of destroying it as a home. The mother divorces her marriage, the son becomes an artist, the father abandons his business… In other words, the magnetism of seduction is enough to dynamite the entire convention of aristocratic society. Could Samuel be an heir to such seduction? Could repressed desire once again be a force capable of destroying the veneer of morality and the accumulation of wealth as the sole purpose?

The wit of Babygirl writer-director Halina Reijn also lies in conveying the spirit of our time. There is no latent May ’68 among us, as there was for the fearless young man in Milan. Perhaps there is in Samuel the seed of anarchy that can manifest itself in a great revenge, like a Joker ou Parasite, or like the very real Luigi Mangione, who murdered a healthcare industry CEO in late 2024.

It is no coincidence that the character leaves the plot, casually told by Romy, on a trip to Tokyo to work at Kawazaki, where symbolism can allude both to the total flexibility of this new work figure that is Samuel, and to the long wait for revenge, the spirit of revenge sometimes so well represented in Japanese fiction.

Romy will not be the one who destroys the structure in exchange for her desire, she will be the one who is still able to assimilate this desire even more, because her journey is a progression without limits. The crisis does not blow up her house, the crisis is phagocytized into the mechanisms that allow her to continue to be a successful and reference woman with a model family.

If there is a public life to attend to and a private life to be an example, in which even eroticism must comply with either pre-1968 conventions or post-1968 social justice agendas, there is still a third layer: the intimate life, the imagination. Let desire be our pet, while the subtle forces of computational parts, not to say gears, continue to function fully.

Capitalist realism, which persists at the end of the film, involves placing intimate life under the yoke as a subset of private life, already allied to public life. The structures are maintained with internal advances, complemented by imagination and the enjoyment of power.If I wanna be humiliated I'm gonna pay someone to do it” (If I want to be humiliated, I will pay someone to do it). Romy’s phrase could become an emblem for the late capitalism that continues without losing steam at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century.

Here is the paradox, in which total freedom can be achieved, even the freedom to degrade oneself, as long as one is paid well. The drives, typical of the unconscious territory, have not yet been conquered in actions and the market, and cannot be, but there are intermediaries and outsourced workers to satisfy them.

*Golden Saul is a professor of philosophy at the Federal Institute of Bahia – Irecê campus. Author of, among other books, Mailon, the dog who barks at the mirror (Caramurê Productions).

Reference

Baby girl
USA, 2024, 114 minutes
Directed and written by: Halina Reijn.
Cast: Nicole Kidmann, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas

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