Antonio Banderas cut a dapper figure as he was joined by his partner Nicole Kimpel at Venice Film Festival’s premiere of Babygirl on Friday.
The Spanish actor, 64, who stars as Jacob in the erotic thriller, looked handsome in a black tuxedo suit as he put on a loved-up display with Nicole, 43, on the red carpet.
He teamed a pair of smart black leather shoes with his red carpet ensemble and sported a pair of orange-tinted shades.
Meanwhile, Nicole exuded glamour in a red floor-length gown which boasted an asymmetric shoulder strap, a ruched bandeau design and a floral brooch at the chest.
The investment banker added inches to her tall frame with a pair of gold stiletto high heels.
Antonio Banderas cut a dapper figure in a black tuxedo as he was joined by his partner Nicole Kimpel at Venice Film Festival’s premiere of Babygirl on Friday
The Spanish actor, 64, who stars as Jacob in the erotic thriller, looked handsome in the three-piece suit as he put on a loved-up display with Nicole, 43, on the red carpet
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Nicole Kidman stuns in a dramatic nude corset and velvet skirt at the Babygirl premiere during Venice Film Festival – after admitting she's not 'brave' enough to watch the movie as sex scenes left her feeling 'vulnerable'
The beauty toted her essentials around in a mini black Bvlgari bag and elevated her natural beauty with a flawless palette of makeup.
During the event, Antonio was joined by Nicole Kidman, 57, who stars as high-powered CEO Romy in the movie.
The actress exuded elegance in a nude corset top and black velvet skirt as she posed for snaps with her co-stars.
In Babygirl, Nicole stars as a high-powered New York business executive who starts a risky affair with her much-younger intern, played by Harris Dickinson.
She admitted she felt ‘vulnerable’ filming multiple scenes of masturbation, plus a depiction of a submissive/dominant relationship for the erotic new thriller.
Rising British star Harris has a career-making turn as Samuel, the intern who intuits that his boss Romy, the CEO of a tech firm, wants to be dominated.
Nicole has made nothing like it since the dream-like erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut with then-husband Tom Cruise 25 years ago.
She said that an intimacy co-ordinator and closed set had been vital to conjuring the sex scenes which tell the story of her character’s existential crisis, resolved through a taboo-busting sexual odyssey.
Meanwhile, Nicole exuded glamour in a red floor-length gown which boasted an asymmetric shoulder strap, a ruched bandeau design, and a floral brooch at the chest
During the event, Antonio was joined by Nicole Kidman, 57, who stars as high-powered CEO Romy in the movie (pictured L-R David Hinojosa, Sophie Wilde, Antonio, Nicole, Harris Dickinson, and Halina Reijn)
The actress exuded elegance in a nude corset top and black velvet skirt as she posed for snaps and chatted with her co-stars
Nicole said: ‘I think this film is obviously yes about sex, but it’s about desire it’s about your inner thoughts, it’s about secrets, it’s about marriage, it’s about truth, power, consent.’
‘This is one woman’s story and this is I hope a very liberating story. It’s told by a woman through her gaze. It’s Halina (Reijn’s) script, she wrote it and she directs and that made it unique, that suddenly I was going to be in the hands of a woman with this material. It was very dear to our shared instincts and very, very freeing.’
She added: ‘I don’t think there’s a judgement attached (about the character). It’s for each person to react to Romy and the way she behaves. My connection to it is that I want to examine human beings, women, on screen, to explore what it means to be human in all the facets of that and the labyrinth of that.’
She said that she was: ‘exposed and vulnerable and frightened when it comes to giving it to the world’ but that her experience of making it had been: ‘delicate and intimate and very deep.’
She added: ‘I knew she wasn’t going to exploit me. However, anyone interprets that, I didn’t feel exploited. I felt very much a part of that. There was enormous caretaking by all of us, we were all very gentle with each other and helped each other. It felt very authentic, protected and, at the same time, real.’
In Babygirl, Nicole stars as a high-powered New York business executive who starts a risky affair with her much-younger intern, played by Harris Dickinson
Discussing the movie, Nicole said: ‘I think this film is obviously yes about sex, but it’s about desire it’s about your inner thoughts, it’s about secrets, it’s about marriage, it’s about truth’
It’s been 25 years since Nicole last took on an erotic role when she starred alongside Tom Cruise in the steamy and controversial movie Eyes Wide Shut (both pictured)
The film opens with Nicole’s character, Romy Mathis, faking a very convincing orgasm while having sex with her husband, played by Antonio, and then going into another room and masturbating to pornography.
She explores her desire to be dominated with her intern but – unlike in previous erotic dramas such as Basic Instinct – female desire doesn’t destroy her career or her family life and, without giving away the ending, she remains professionally powerful and married at its conclusion.
Antonio and Nicole often attend red carpet events together and have been with one another since 2014, the year before Antonio’s divorce from first wife Melanie Griffiths was finalised.
Together they have overcome Antonio’s cancer scare, his heart attack, and his struggle with COVID-19.
Antonio and his ex Melanie are on good terms, with Antonio telling Spanish digital show El Break de las 7 in 2020: ‘I think we are both reluctant to bury 20 years of marriage.’
‘We are human beings, we make mistakes and that is the human condition. You have to leave the egos aside and not want to prove that you are right or find who’s guilty of what.’
Antonio and Nicole have been together since 2014, the year before Antonio’s divorce from first wife Melanie Griffiths was finalised
Antonio was with Melanie from 1996 until the pair finalised their divorce in 2015. They share daughter Stella Banderas Griffiths, whom they welcomed in September 1996 (pictured 2005)
‘Because it may be both or neither of you. There is a moment when things are over and you have to accept it. The life I had with Melanie was beautiful.’
‘We had 20 wonderful years during which we gave our best and lived wonderful moments that I will not forget.’
‘We had a wonderful daughter that we both love and that is the end result of our relationship, the most beautiful thing we have ever done together.’
Antonio welcomed daughter Stella Banderas Griffiths with Melanie in September 1996.
Melanie has two other children, daughter Dakota, 31, with Don Johnson and son Alexander, 35, with Steven Bauer.
Babygirl review: Nicole Kidman sizzles in this tale of passion and power across the age divide, writes BRIAN VINER
Babygirl
Verdict: A sexy, post #MeToo thriller
One of the oddities of these post #MeToo years in Hollywood is that Lolita-style stories about older men falling for much younger women or even schoolgirls have practically disappeared – while the opposite dynamic is suddenly all the rage.
Hardly a month seems to pass without an older woman bedding a chap 25 years her junior, as if to right a century of cinematic wrongs.
Anyway, hot on the high heels of Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine getting it together in The Idea of You on Amazon Prime, and Nicole Kidman cavorting with Zac Efron in A Family Affair on Netflix, along comes Kidman again, entangled in more ways than one with 28-year-old British actor Harris Dickinson in the steamy psychosexual thriller Babygirl.
Here at the Venice Film Festival, air-conditioned cinemas are currently offering a blessed relief from hotter-than-usual weather. But last night’s world premiere of Babygirl brought a different kind of sizzle.
Nicole Kidman attends a red carpet for ‘Babygirl’ during the 81st Venice International Film Festival on August 30
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in a scene from ‘Babygirl’ which will be released in January
Antonio Banderas and Nicole Kidman in a scene from ‘Babygirl’
Kidman has described it as the most ‘exposing’ performance she has ever given – which, considering 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut, is quite a claim.
She plays Romy, a corporate hotshot who runs a thriving robotics company replacing warehouse staff with automatons, and making wise observations to her workforce such as ‘one-day shipping has dramatically upped the ante’.
On the face of it she is as serenely successful at home as she is at work. Her dishy theatre director husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) seems only too delighted to cater to her somewhat vigorous sexual demands, and she to his. The family unit is completed by a couple of teenage daughters – not that Dutch writer-director Halina Reijn spends much time developing them. One of them is gay and the other likes dancing.
Still, Reijn has other matters to attend to, and gets down to them with arresting urgency. Filmmakers sometimes start their features with sound rather than pictures – a hubbub of people chatting, perhaps, or a lone dog barking in the street. Here, it’s Romy evidently in the throes of sexual ecstasy, although she needs to look at online porn to finish the job. ‘Exposing’ indeed.
Later, on her way to work, Romy is struck by the sight of a young man calming a dangerous dog. The young man turns out to be Samuel (Dickinson), one of a new batch of company interns, who are duly ushered in to pay homage to Romy in her swanky office. She instantly clocks his good looks and his swagger, and soon enough she finds that she cannot resist him.
But Babygirl is not just the story of an illicit office affair across the age divide. Far more interestingly, it is about power and workplace politics. Samuel senses that Romy, whose job is telling others what to do, has a kinky yearning to be the one jumping to orders. So the CEO and the intern switch roles; the boss becomes the bossed.
Kidman has described it as the most ‘exposing’ performance she has ever given – which, considering 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut, is quite a claim
It is a smart, sexy film, brilliantly and boldly acted by Kidman and Dickinson, with first-class support from Banderas, writes Brian Viner
That is far from the end of the affair. There are revelations and recriminations, ambitions thwarted, and hints that Romy’s sexual psychoses are somehow connected with a strange childhood spent in cults and communes.
There is also an ending that couldn’t possibly happen if this were a relationship between a male head honcho and a woman much lower on the corporate ladder. However, at the same time, I wonder if Heijn is being quite as counterintuitive as she thinks: this is still, for the most part, a story in which the man holds the cards.
Nevertheless, it is a smart, sexy film, brilliantly and boldly acted by Kidman and Dickinson, with first-class support from Banderas (who has spent most of his career being absolutely nobody’s idea of a cuckold).
As for the almost-unmentionable, the alleged cosmetic work that sometimes seems to have limited Kidman’s range of expressions from A only to about D, that is cleverly woven into the narrative. Romy is clearly the kind of woman who would make a friend of Botox.
On the subject of injections, for the rest of us here in Venice, after some so-so early films, Babygirl has given us just the shot of adrenaline we required.
Babygirl comes out in January