Writer/director Halina Reijn made her English-language feature directorial debut a few years ago with the stellar horror comedy film Bodies Bodies Bodies. That is a movie I would have liked more people to have seen. It was hilarious, mean and sharply critical of something very specific about the zeitgeist at the time. It’s also a film that lays the groundwork for something like Babygirl, her new film starring Nicole Kidman, for which she won the Volvi Cup, the top prize for an actress, at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Kidman has been a staple of cinema, and more recently prestige television, over many years, but it’s been a while since she’s had the chance to really sink her teeth into a leading role in a film. It’s a given Kidman is great, but how is the movie happening around her?

Babygirl opens on Romy Mathis (Kidman), a high-powered CEO of a New York City tech company, who lives in a beautiful home in the suburbs with her theatre director husband (Antonio Banderas) and two teenage daughters. She’s starting to realize how unfulfilled she is in her marriage. Basically her husband has never really satisfied her sexually and the disconnect they have in the bedroom starts to become more apparent. She has a run-in on the street with Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a handsome younger man who ends up taking part in her company’s intern program. He starts to realize almost immediately how repressed she is, and might be able to give her what she needs. This leads Romy on a journey to discover the passion and intensity that’s been lacking from her marriage and her life as a whole.

Nicole Kidman’s performance in Babygirl is probably one of the top three performances of her entire career. What she’s able to accomplish with this character, who is never explicitly likable, but is always fascinating and worth rooting for, is thrilling and reminds you of what Kidman has always been capable of, but is seldom given the chance to do. There is an intense level of emotional depth in her performance, and a lot of weird places this character has to go as she begins to discover new things about herself. This is essentially a coming of age movie about kink, and sexual liberation, but it’s never judging our leading character, like so many films about people having affairs tend to do. And this emotional journey is a story Kidman is solely telling with her face. The choice to not cut away from Kidman’s face during the film’s intimate scenes, is an incredibly effective one. This is an emotionally revealing performance in a number of ways. I can imagine a lot of other actresses were scared to take on this kind of character, but Nicole Kidman is never scared.

The other performances here are quite good as well. Harris Dickinson is absolutely more of an idea of a character than a fully developed one, but for the purpose he serves in this story, it works. Dickinson is charming, but not in an obvious way. There’s a danger and a swagger to him, and as a viewer you kind of can’t look away from him when he’s onscreen, and the ability for this younger actor, who to be fair, has quite his own list of credits to his name, to not only hold his own, but challenge the work of a powerhouse performer like Kidman, is pretty impressive. Antonio Banderas, as Kidman’s husband who for most of the film is blissfully unaware of what’s troubling his wife, is excellent here as well, giving unexpected depth to a character who traditionally in this kind of movie is much less. And yet, the film itself is more of a showcase for the work Nicole Kidman is doing and it feels like the other actors here know that and are on board for what that means.

Halina Reijn is again working with cinematographer Jasper Wolfe here, and there’s lots of long takes and interesting camerawork here that I enjoyed. The score by Cristobal Tapia de Veer is also very striking and very memorable. The costumes by Kurt Swanson and Bert Mueller that Nicole Kidman gets to wear are also gorgeous and complimentary of the whole statuesque goddess thing she’s always had going on, but the way the costumes evolve as she begins to come into her own, is a very pointed and fascinating choice. Even the music supervision and choice of pre-existing songs that the movie includes feel like perfect choices. This is a very well constructed film on pretty much every level.

Overall, I’m surprised by how gripping and compelling I found Halina Reijn’s Babygirl to be. Sure, I enjoyed her last film a great deal and that suggests that I would enjoy this as well. But a film about a person having an affair is very different from the go-for-broke nuttiness of something like Bodies Bodies Bodies. There are a selection of story beats you expect to see in a film like this, and Babygirl is avoiding and transcending them every step of the way. I had no idea where this was going for pretty much the entire duration, and I never felt like this film was leering or judgmental of its characters, and that’s something we only accomplish with a singular directorial vision.

As a character study and as a narrative about infidelity, as a story about the quest for power and control and dominance, and what all that means in a post-Me Too world, Babygirl is electric, fascinating and ultimately thrilling. There is so much about this film that stuck with me days after my screening, and I’m actually looking forward to seeing it again. I feel like we are going to be hearing about it a lot as this year’s awards season continues to materialize. Nicole Kidman is a performer who is always fantastic, even when the film around her is not up to par. And she deserves credit for her enthusiasm for working with interesting up-and-coming filmmakers rather than cashing in on the easy paycheck gigs. Kidman has no comfort zone, and that’s something we often forget about her. You feel the presence she brings to every performance she gives, but when a filmmaker like Halina Reijn gives her the canvas to dive this deep into a character, there’s no limit to what she can do.