Home Life Style I found it liberating when I first had a much younger lover, but I called the police when he ended up knocking on my window… As Nicole Kidman’s Babygirl hits theaters, LISA HILTON reveals the double-edged sword of women’s affairs older with age difference

I found it liberating when I first had a much younger lover, but I called the police when he ended up knocking on my window… As Nicole Kidman’s Babygirl hits theaters, LISA HILTON reveals the double-edged sword of women’s affairs older with age difference

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Nicole Kidman as Romy and Harris Dickinson as Sam in Babygirl

He was a strange mix of arrogance and uncertainty, strikingly handsome, with blonde hair and beautiful green eyes. He was also 23 years younger than me.

I wasn’t his boss, but we met at a work event, and it was only after we’d been talking for about half an hour that I realized he was trying to chat with me.

The relationship that began that night lasted six months; and although it was much more meaningful to him than it was to me, it also transformed what I thought I knew about myself.

It was a confidence boost and a revelation in the bedroom, but it also shed an uncomfortably revealing light on my character.

I’m horrified by the way older men objectify younger women, but here I was, doing the same thing to him, until the balance of power shifted and I started to wonder what I’d gotten myself into.

The idea of ​​an older woman having “liberating” sex with a younger man is a hot topic right now. From Anne Hathaway playing a nearly 40-year-old single mother who falls in love with a 24-year-old in The Idea Of You, to Miranda’s best-selling novel July All Fours (in which a wife experiences a sexual awakening with a young lover) , not to mention the fact that the fourth Bridget Jones sees her taking a lover 28 years her junior, it seems like the taboo between younger men and older women is being completely broken.

But it is Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, recently released, who has really caused people to talk.

Nicole Kidman as Romy and Harris Dickinson as Sam in Babygirl

Lisa Hilton said the film triggered some strange and uncomfortable memories of her own experience.

Lisa Hilton said the film triggered some strange and uncomfortable memories of her own experience.

Directed by Dutch actress Halina Reijn, 49, the film stars Kidman as Romy, whose seemingly perfect marriage and career are interrupted by the excitement (and threat) of her relationship with a twenty-something intern, Samuel.

At first, the power imbalance is evident. Romy is the successful CEO of a technology company and is married to Jacob, a distinguished theater director (Antonio Banderas). Her life is straight out of a fashion magazine, from her two glamorous homes to her achingly chic wardrobe.

But Romy has a secret, described by Reijn in an interview as “an inner beast that she cannot tame.”

Despite a seemingly enthusiastic sex life with her husband, she is unable to orgasm with him and instead secretly masturbates to pornography involving sexual bondage and submission. Romy, a woman who controls every aspect of her life, fantasizes about being dominated.

Enter Samuel, whose irresistible appeal stems from his ability to intuit a desire Romy can barely admit to herself.

As she finds herself embroiled in an affair, Romy doubts this power imbalance, and yet, as Samuel reminds her, he could ruin her entire life with a single phone call. Kidman delivers a raw and compelling performance that has already earned her the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival, with rumors of an Oscar.

Critics, however, are divided on how erotic this erotic thriller actually is. While some praise Babygirl as the new Fifty Shades of Grey, others suggest that the supposedly transgressive sex scenes are, in fact, quite tame. What gives the film its edge, however, is not the level of explicit sex, but the nuanced questions it raises about power. Personally, the film triggered some strange and uncomfortable memories from my own experience.

When I met my lover, at a party for food writers, I was in my forties and he was in his twenties.

Frankly, his interest that night surprised me. I had been mostly single in the 11 years since my divorce and thought I had forgotten how to flirt, but after a few glasses of wine I found myself responding.

Still, when he asked for my number, I assumed he was just being polite. But he called the next day (he later explained to me that calling someone, rather than texting, was very important for people his age, a nuance I didn’t see), and we met for dinner.

Like Samuel in Babygirl, he was a mix of bravado and hesitation, acting like it was a foregone conclusion that we’d end up in bed, but he seemed to expect me to take the initiative. I did it and it was exciting.

After the first night, I really didn’t expect to see him again. It had been fun and made me feel more attractive and carefree than I had in a long time, but I was surprised when his interest continued.

Soon we were “officially” dating, but I was never completely relaxed in the relationship.

For starters, I encountered disapproval from my friends, who considered the age difference inappropriate. I appreciated his honesty, but it made me feel self-conscious in social situations.

More than one friend brought up the topic of money. I am far from rich but, as expected, I earned more than him.

This was not a particular problem for me (he was always scrupulous about paying what he owed and generous within his means), but the suggestion had been raised that he was trying to profit from the imbalance, which made me feel Stupid and sleazy, like he was an opportunistic gigolo and I was a middle-aged fool.

Physically it also made me quite nervous, but not for the reasons you might expect.

I’m in my mid-40s, I’ve had a child, and I’m hopefully pretty realistic about my appearance. My body and my face are no longer what they were and I accept that. Plus, he was always flattering and his enthusiasm for sex left me in no doubt that he found me desirable.

What worried me was his appearance. He was strikingly striking: tall, blonde, with incredible cheekbones and beautiful eyes, and he turned heads every time we went out.

I was conflicted about this. Part of me appreciated her genuine beauty, but at the same time I felt captivated by her, like Romy in the movie. I was also aware that I was ignoring the personality clashes between us that would have bothered me more if he hadn’t been so dazzling.

When we were alone, the age difference seemed invisible, but it became evident when I tried to integrate it into my life. Our cultural references were completely different: comical when it came to music or movies, not so much when it came to privacy.

Like most of his generation, he lived much of his life online and we argued on several occasions when I found him checking my emails. He couldn’t understand that I saw this as a serious intrusion into my privacy. His attitude was: ‘What does it matter if you have nothing to hide?’

I also didn’t like that he posted photos of us on social media, which I don’t use. (This seemed very strange, even suspicious.)

When we had dinner with my friends, I found myself making concessions, as if I were a child, and sometimes I felt embarrassed when I failed in the conversation.

It wasn’t his fault, but I finally had to admit to myself that I didn’t really take him seriously. I was objectifying him, condescending to him, and I didn’t like him for it.

Just when I realized we had no future, he started pushing for us to move in together.

We had enjoyed good times, but I certainly didn’t want him in my house or permanently in my life. I had seen our flirting as a light-hearted affair, while he had seen a meaningful relationship.

It seemed to me that he was becoming increasingly invasive and controlling, and I really identified with Romy’s surprise and distress when Samuel makes advances into her house in the film.

Likewise, I felt terrible, guilty, and hypocritical, like I had used him in a way that would have seemed horrible to me if the situation had been reversed.

I tried to end things nicely, but he became belligerent and aggressive, bombarding me with accusatory text messages. One night, I woke up terrified to find him knocking on my bedroom window. Drunk, he had jumped over the garden wall and demanded that I let him in. Instead, I called the police.

It was a horrible way to end the relationship, and although there was absolutely no excuse for his threatening behavior, the situation didn’t seem black and white. Much later I received one last message from him, apologizing profusely. At the end, he wrote: “The only thing I ever wanted from you was your attention.” Creepy, but also a reminder that she had treated him with disdain because of his youth and attractiveness.

This is one of the elements of Babygirl that I found most fascinating: the shifting balance in Romy and Samuel’s relationship.

At one point in the film, Samuel dances shirtless for her, showing off his perfect skin and taut body. We feel Romy’s lust and his power to play with her, but as viewers it’s also disconcerting: do we have the right to ‘pervert’ on him in a way that would be objectionably exploitative if he were a woman?

Samuel is cocky and arrogant, but sometimes naive and insecure, which is as much a part of his appeal as his confident demand that Romy lick milk off his knee.

It seems surprising that a woman’s relationship with a younger man can be considered shocking in itself. After all, celebrities and high-profile figures such as Sam Taylor-Johnson, Brigitte Macron and Joan Collins, to name just a few, have much younger partners.

Perhaps the truly disturbing aspect of Romy’s character is her lust for destruction, the thrill of risking her job and her family. Samuel offers a complete contrast to their daily lives, not only in what they do, but also where they do it (a series of dirty hotels; an unlikely party).

Romy is constantly “performing perfection”, as a wife, mother and woman. One of the most revealing scenes in Babygirl is when we see her get Botox, another element of the facade she feels obligated to present.

Kidman’s willingness to strip her own image as a Hollywood star to the bone adds strength to the sense of reckless rebellion her character achieves with Samuel, intoxicating because it gives the lie to everything Romy is supposed to want.

It’s a feeling of both liberation and self-sabotage that I definitely relate to in my own relationship with a younger man, although in a much smaller way.

Director Reijn has described her film as a conversation with the successful erotic thrillers of the 1990s, such as Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction. But Babygirl raises much more challenging questions about unequal relationships.

Has Romy used Samuel or is he a victim? More generally, is it possible for women to recognize and accept the darker elements of themselves?

In the film, Romy’s young assistant Esme is aggressively disappointed when her boss fails to live up to her own idea of ​​what a powerful feminist should be, and perhaps that, more than the sex scenes, be the key to Babygirl’s erotic charge. Sex is powerful and liberating, but it can also be complicated and even scary.

As I discovered in my own relationship, desire can sometimes be alarmingly blind.

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