Around 11 a.m. Venice time on Friday, the group chat I share with a few other American journalists here started blowing up.
“Harris is such a goddamn hottie, Jesus,” wrote one critic.
“I’m sorry, I can’t think right now, he’s so hot,” said a features writer.
These thirsty viewers had just left the first press screening of Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, which was a few hours away from being tentatively declared “the year’s hottest movie.” The object of their affection was Harris Dickinson, the 28-year-old British actor who has seemed perpetually on the verge of a breakout since 2017, when he played a sexually confused Brooklyn teen in Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats. In Babygirl, Dickinson stars as Samuel, a corporate intern who embarks on a mutually pleasurable journey of self-exploration through dom/sub dynamics with his female CEO, Romy (Nicole Kidman). He feeds her dog treats, fingers her mouth, and brings her to a rave that seemingly takes place inside a Troye Sivan music video. It is a display of rare erotic power, and it may be just the thing that finally turns Dickinson from one of the guys, to The Guy.
It is not Dickinson’s fault that he has not yet become a household name. There are simply too many handsome British actors under the age of 35 for any normal person to keep track of. Awash in a sea of Callum Turners and George MacKays, for a long time I was never quite sure what he looked like. He was hilarious as an insecure male model in the Best Picture nominee Triangle of Sadness, and perfectly charming as one of the doomed wrestlers in The Iron Claw. But judging by the feverish reaction on the Lido, Babygirl has given him something priceless for a young actor. Aspects of his persona that used to be blurry or inchoate have now come into focus. This movie has provided Harris Dickinson with a star image.
At the film’s Cipriani afterparty, the New York Times’ Kyle Buchanan compared the Babygirl effect to what Challengers did for Josh O’Connor, who’d previously played nice guys and nebbishes. Here, Dickinson is not just a hot dude; with a bunch of tattoos and a little gold chain, he is the hot dude who is all the more appealing because he is bad for you. As Romy tries to explain her desires, she notes that the dom/sub thing only turns her on when there are real stakes. Like a gender-flipped version of David Mamet’s Oleanna, Samuel turns out to hold the real power — one meeting with HR, and he could ruin her life completely. And yet, it works because he’s not some Christian Grey fantasy. As a dom, he’s a little fumbling and unsure at the start. He feels like a real person, even when he’s instantly able to provide Romy the gushing orgasm she’s never been able to achieve with her husband. (After this and The Paperboy, Kidman is forcing trend-piece writers to finally address the question of whether squirt is pee.)
My colleague Alison Willmore opened her review by spotlighting the image of Dickinson “wearing pleated dress pants and no shirt, lifting a robe-clad Nicole Kidman in his arms while George Michael’s ‘Father Figure’ blasts on the soundtrack” — a moment, she wrote, of “disorienting appeal.” She was not the only person to respond to his performance on a primal level. Power is great, one publicist told me, but “sometimes you just want to not have to make fucking decisions.” At the Babygirl afterparty, it seemed like every woman in the room was buzzing with satisfied energy. “My mouth hurts from smiling so much,” one told me.
That’s the benefit that comes from playing a sexually-competent dirtbag in a movie that takes female desire so seriously. “There’s a huuuge orgasm gap that still exists,” Reijn said at the film’s official press conference. “Take note, men.” Then she added: “Not you, Harris” — as if he and Samuel were the same person.
I get the sense that many Babygirl viewers might make that same mistake. As the afterparty slid towards closing time, whispers swirled that Dickinson would be hosting an after-afterparty somewhere across the water. A few of us huddled together, trying to make a decision. We decided not to chase it. “I don’t need to be spending my night trying to get into some straight guy in his twenties’ hotel room,” one critic sighed. But one of us peeled off. He was last seen sidling his way onto Dickinson’s water taxi. Who knows what kind of story he’ll have to tell.
