In a huge win for Big Dairy, Nicole Kidman recently declared that she “really likes milk(s).” The comment was made by a new one press interview with Baby girlthe upcoming erotic thriller from writer-director Halina Reijn (who also directs Body, Body, Body) in which Kidman's character, a high-powered CEO named Romy, submissively takes a glass of cow's milk from her intern-turned-dom, Samuel (Harris Dickinson). It's one of the film's two unique milky moments, both of which stand on a level above the rest of its erotic moments — above the moaning, humping on the floor, and even the moonlit pool makeup. – because it has something for milk I feel. it's been a long time. In light of what feels like an ongoing, polarizing dairy discourse in American culture, Baby girl shifted the spotlight from, say, the alarmist rhetoric of RFK Jr. and conservative milk guzzlers. However, Baby girl spills its milk on the floor, licks it on all fours, and takes it back for a kinky corner that feels hot, playful, and free.
As Eater senior reporter Written by Bettina MalinkintalHeated discussions about milk have been simmering for several years now. Milk consumption in the US increased along with a repackaged, pastoral-pining brand of conservatism around which My boys, sigmasand translators orbit — and looks like an answer to “got milk?” becomes a barometer of where one stands in the midst of controversy.
Baby girlhowever, invites us to a different element of the milk discourse. The film draws on the long history of Madonna-Whore Complexwhere milk can be an agent of sanctification or sexual fantasy; there is a Catholic chapel dedicated to milk in the West Bank, after all, as it is supposedly it was there that Mary's mother's milk spilled while nursing Jesus, turning the chapel from a muddy red to a pure white. In contrast, some of the top Google search results for “milk fetish” yield a crop of not only blushing, but anxious Reddit questions like, “Did I dump my BF on his milk fetish?“and”Is my BF weird with a milk fetish?”
No nursing at Baby girlbut each character seeks their own version of nurturing. Romy seeks an understanding, and feeding her own erotic desires. Samuel, as strong as he could be, asked Romy to bend down and hold him in one of their less guarded scenes. She is his babygirl. But, sometimes, even he has to be a babyboy. And don't we all?
Milk becomes the couple's first sexual chess piece. It's clear that Romy – like many high-powered CEOs – dreams of being dommed, but struggles to initially hand over the reins. One night, Samuel anonymously sent her a glass of milk at a company cocktail hour. He debates drinking it (“What is the what?” his co-workers asked with anger). Then, she acts with great enthusiasm (which wins her a “good girl” from Samuel). It's the kind of behavior that separates him from his otherwise socially awkward, literal robotic world (his company builds warehouse robots for Amazon). When the affair is in full bloom, there's a particularly tender scene where Romy takes milk from a dish on the floor of a hotel room like an animal, in the middle of foreplay, while Samuel continued to lick it off his face. It's one of her most intimate erotic highs in the film, and also one of her weakest.
Water plays an inverse role in the film. It is not used to push the awakening of Romy, but to bring him – and all in the wake of his dalliances – from playing and vulnerability, and back to a state of order and self-perceived goodness. Glasses of poignant water are clearly present during a confrontational scene with Romy's intern, Esme (Sophie Wilde), as well as her kind, warm, but erotically dull husband, that we were also told to take a Bible for rest all the time. this.
To see Baby girl is to join an endless, stealthy parade of horny tropes that would otherwise find new life in the hands of the film's excellent cast and script — and especially within the warm, buzzing presence of milk. It is fair to say that, here, the dairy is not a one-note emblem for the far right, or even a nuclear family ideal. It will be warm and loose; sweet and perverse. It leaned into its crowd with a wink. And by 2025, I hope we can too.
Additional photo description credits: All photos via Getty Images