Director: Halina ReijnStars: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde

Dutch writer-director Reijn looks to 80s erotic thrillers such as Indecent Proposal and Basic Instinct for inspiration for this bold drama. Kidman is Romy Mathis, the high-powered CEO of a teasingly unspecified ‘robot business’ Tensile. Her husband Jacob (Banderas) is a successful theatre director, and they have two teenage daughters. We first encounter Romy masturbating furiously over porn on her laptop after an unsatisfying bout of sex with her husband. When a group of interns is inducted into the company, Romy’s eye is caught by the handsome but seemingly gauche Samuel (Dickinson). Samuel pushily announces that he has chosen Romy to be his mentor. Initially she attempts to brush him off, but he is persistent, so she reluctantly starts to give him her time. A torrid affair follows in which the frustrated, flinty Romy decides to let her guard down jeopardising her family and her career. Kidman is typically fearless here, while Dickinson, another actor with a knack for interesting roles, is compellingly enigmatic. Reijn effectively repurposes the glossy 80s genre into a recognizably, awkwardly human depiction of female desire with bedroom scenes that are both clumsy and genuinely erotic. Alongside the frank sexual content, there is an irreverent comic touch on display here, underscored by the inclusion of 80s hits, George Michael’s ‘Father Figure’ and INXS’s ‘Never Tear Us Apart’. The momentum lets up a little in the closing stretch as the script succumbs to genre dictates, but this remains a sophisticated and subversive examination of power, control and lust.

David Willoughby

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