Could ‘Babygirl’ Have Been Made by a Male Director?

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic I’ve been seeing variations on the question above on comment boards and social media, and the answer is inevitably a resounding “No.

Fucking. Way.” But let’s be clear about what the question really is, since it’s actually two questions at once. The fundamental thing that’s being asked is: Could “Babygirl,” an enthralling high-kink corporate drama, in which Nicole Kidman plays a girlboss who secretly yearns to be dominated and debased, and plays this all out with one of her young male interns…could a male director have gotten away with making that movie today?

The answer everyone seems to agree on, with an underlying note of look-how-far-we’ve-come cultural pride, is no. I don’t necessarily disagree — though actually, in a way, I sort of do. “Babygirl,” written and directed by the volcanically talented Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn, is a gripping movie about a woman who liberates herself by giving into transgressive desires — desires we might once have categorized as politically or sexually incorrect, and that we would now call…what?

Would we say, “She gets turned on by doing stuff that’s super not woke?” No, we wouldn’t say that, because it would sound absurd.