A film by Halina Reijn
With: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde, John Cenatiempo, Anoop Desai, Victor Slezak, Maxwell Whittington-Cooper, Izabel Mar, Vaughan Reilly
A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern.
Our rate: *
A film that tackles a sulphurous subject with great seriousness, but fails to create a scandalous, sticky atmosphere or anything that would really put the film on the provocative side. Quite the opposite, in fact, as in 50 Shades of Grey, the treatment is aimed at the counter-object, and the sulphur is blithely replaced by a more repulsive mainstream form that nips in the bud any intention that might more readily be classified as cinematographic. A far cry from what a Verhoeven might have done on a similar subject, Nicole Kidman may have sought to put herself in apparent danger (by playing up her image as an aging actress with unfulfilled desires, although it’s less dented than that of a Banderas as a grandpa/old man), but we’re on the opposite end of the spectrum from the experiences she might have had in giving herself body and soul to the camera of Kubrick, or even Campion.