Halina Reijn’s film about a company executive’s carnal adventure with her intern is expertly done but suspect at its core, despite Kidman’s bold performance
omy Mathis owns a duplex apartment in the city and a big house in the country. She has a doting husband, two adorable daughters and a gilded career as the CEO of Tensile, a non-specific “robot business” that runs a successful warehouse delivery scheme. Romy – in the parlance of a women’s glossy magazine – has it all, which naturally means that she wants something else, something more.
Romy is played by Nicole Kidman, whose bright, bold performance nonetheless carries a top-note of distress, as though she is not entirely convinced by everything she’s signed up for. She is the star of Halina Reijn’s film, which premieres here in Venice and might have been– that other big drama about a powerful woman laid low – were it not so superficially pleased with itself, so thrilled by its own daring.
The film opens with an orgasm and closes with another, although it turns out that the first climax was faked, because Romy has never been truly satisfied by her spouse. She confesses to having “dark thoughts”, masturbates compulsively to her laptop and hungers for an adventure to get her out of her rut. This explains why she’s so drawn to Samuel , a twentysomething gofer at Tensile’s New York office whose puckish self-assurance hangs just the right side of insolence.
Like Romy’s first climax, the picture is a burlesque, a performance; expertly done but suspect at its core. Reijn, a Dutch-born director now based in New York, enjoyed a breakout hit with the punchyin 2022, but this film is less satisfying, and at times rather silly. Now Romy and Samuel are locked in a torrid and toxic affair.
Is it a spoiler to mention that Romy and Samuel’s adventure doesn’t necessarily end well? There is no neat happy ending for our lust-struck lovers; just more mess, more stress, and eventually, a screaming row beside the Christmas tree. Reijn’s drama deserves credit for its lack of cheap moralising and suggests that even the most reckless affair can bring unforeseen benefits.
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