AN in DEPTH CONVERSATION with HALINA REIJN

Over the last few months, our founder's book WANT and the film ‘Babygirl’ starring Nicole Kidman, have shocked, provoked, and initiated great debate around the challenges that women still seem to have with asking for what they want both sexually and in many aspects of their lives.

We had an in depth conversation with the acclaimed actor and director of ‘Babygirl’ Halina Reijn about the life-changing events that led her to this project, how she felt about the overwhelming response, her hopes and passions for women and the need for ‘comfortability’ with all aspects of ourselves.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What was something surprising you learned about yourself between the release of your previous film 'Bodies Bodies Bodies' and 'Babygirl'?

At 45, I moved to New York, so it was very late. I had a very comfortable life here in the Netherlands, all my friends and family were very close by and I had a big career here. I then moved to a completely different city that was so big and I didn't know anybody and nobody knew who I was or what I did. If you're used to things in your life, you’re safe, comfortable and suddenly you're taken out of that and dropped in an environment where you don’t know anybody, you have to start over. It's like a cleansing of the soul but it was hard as I was very lonely.

I really doubted myself in every way and I’d have anxiety and all of those things. ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ helped me find more confidence. Afterwards, I still didn't completely find myself rooted in the city or country and I really wanted to. I learned that I wanted to create something that was totally my own script, that I would write completely myself (‘Bodies’ was an existing script I rewrote). I really wanted to say something that went deeper into shame, especially for women and explore the question of whether it is possible to embrace all the different parts of us and become yourself fully, and then to know what you want.

My move to America has been the most risky and scary thing I've ever done and I'm still sometimes struggling with it, but I really feel that I'm a lot more creative there and I have the ability to realize the craziest, darkest and the most shameful ideas that I have, so l am very drawn to it.

With the release of WANT we've learned from women that the book has enabled them to start asking for what they want also, outside of the bedroom. As certain rights for women around the world are increasingly withdrawn, what have your conversations with women been like with the release of 'Babygirl'?

The conversations that I had after ‘Babygirl’ were absolutely moving for me. We had the most intense conversations with women, that’s what has given me the most fulfilment of everything that came with making and releasing this movie. So many women felt seen and felt we addressed subjects that they were afraid to speak about, like the female orgasm and the orgasm gap, but also in a bigger sense asking for what you want. That is exactly the theme of ‘Babygirl’, sexuality is just a metaphor, in reality the movie is about an existential crisis and the confusion women still feel around finding the space that they need to be and become themselves. Not to please men or look at themselves through the lens of patriarchy or trying to be beautiful or stay young and fertile but truly to find our own paths and freedom.

Everything is shifting in the world, it's an incredibly polarising time. As far as women's rights, we're going completely backwards, so it is important to keep these conversations alive. To keep finding each other, connecting and bringing awareness to these huge issues that are going further right in every single way for anybody who's not a straight male. Ask yourself what you want and try to stay true to that no matter what is the assignment, but it's not easy and the systems need to change. All of us are storytellers trying to contribute to that, but it is of course still quite sad to see around us how few female directors there are and female writers. We need to keep celebrating those people and giving them space, we will come to better times.

The music in this project has truly stayed with people (specifically “Father Figure” and “Leash”), what role (if any) do you believe music plays in unlocking something inside of us?

Music in my work is incredibly important, which is ironic because in my life I have a very complicated relationship with music. It comes straight into your heart, there's no filter like if you go to a play or you're reading a book. It’s more in your head with music, it’s a soul experience. Since I was a child I had a hard time listening to music because it immediately determines the mood in a room and the energy, but when I'm creating something or when I'm in the theatre, l really enjoy it because then it’s a very amazing tool to create a certain emotion, or to emphasize a tone.

With ‘Babygirl’ we had so much fun with it. Cristobal Tapia de Veer, my composer (who’s work also includes ‘The White Lotus’) is capable of creating a score that signals to the audience a playfulness and a primal mood of sensuality and sexuality. When my characters are fighting and it seems like the stakes are so high, Romy (Nicole Kidman) is about to lose everything, Tapia de Veer still communicates a game.

We could've never dreamed that “Father Figure” would become such a huge hit amongst people on TikTok and the Internet, that people would take it and have fun with it, making it their own. For me that song has always been very important, I lost my father when I was 10 and that was the first time I heard the song — I felt completely seen, it was like an x-ray of my soul. I think everybody can relate (to an extent) to the need of wanting to be nourished, safe and held by someone else. I think that's what the song is about and in that scene it's kind of like the daddy and the baby girl. Romy (Nicole Kidman) is also Samuel’s (Harris Dickson) daddy, she holds him, she's way older than him, she has power over him; then on the other side, is this old soul Samuel (Harris Dickson), who is holding her and telling her what to do. They’re playing these opposite roles for each other, that's a very intimate erotic dynamic that they have, processing things that have probably been held inside their hearts for a long time, so these acts are almost therapeutic. “Father Figure” is fun, it's ironic, exactly the theme of the film, I knew that I was gonna use it before I even started writing.

With “Leash”, I love Sky Ferreira, she's a total genius. When A24 asked me who should write a song for the end credits I immediately said I wanted to work with her. When I had her on the phone for the first time, I was super starstruck and I found her brain incredibly fascinating. We have a lot of similarities in how we think about life, find interesting, what we struggle with and she was able to capture that in a beautiful song.

Like Romy and many successful women, what do you think the disconnect between the mental fortitude needed to break through a “glass ceiling” is, as opposed to communicating our sexual wants and desires?

In society and in the bedroom similar things are at play. We just struggle, we just got the right to vote in 1987, if you truly think about the consequences of that the way women feel makes sense. We are still finding the space we need and in order to become ourselves. We're not there yet, by far and that again goes for all humans, we’re struggling to explore ourselves and to find space within society and in our personal lives to be what we are. It’s hard because nature is also at play. Men behave a certain way and expect certain things and even if they're very evolved and feminists, they are sometimes still driven by these elements that seem to me animalistic. It’s like certain patterns are informed and ingrained so deeply within our DNA that it’s really hard to change those patterns, not only within ourselves but also in men and I think a lot of women suffer from that – myself included.

I’m very sure of what I want in my career and what I want creatively, but then when it comes to romantic love I just seem to lose myself and become a very different person.That is something that I'm working through, but I think these conflicting elements of our personalities are very relatable for a lot of people. Women get up and think “oh my God how I gonna take care of everyone and how am I gonna answer the 500 emails that are waiting for me and how am I gonna take care of my mom or my child or my partner or the company that l'm running”, it's a very different mindset and we are living in a patriarchy so if it would be a matriarchy, maybe everything would look different because we are such different beings.

What story do you think is currently being told to young people about intimacy?

I don't really know because I'm almost 50, I'm not old but I'm older, I am very fascinated by the younger generation. After ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’, I have a very different idea about their relationship to intimacy. It’s different for different groups of young people, depending on where they grow up and what their chances are, but I feel that a lot of young people live through their phones and it is a very different life. It’s very easy for us to judge that and think that they don't experience real life enough, but on the other hand that is their reality and technology is developing with a speed that has never been seen before.

Some of these researchers found that young people do not wanna have sex, they find sexuality scary and would rather hide behind their phone, sexting or whatever they do. But I also hear very different stories about young people that are way more positive than my generation ever was, that are way more positive and very open to different forms of relationships where monogamy is not the core value. I am always very inspired by young people, but I meet a lot of young people in the creative space so that might not be giving a very realistic image of what is truly happening.

In these times that are incredibly extreme the phone has changed everything. It takes courage to flirt with a real person, so I think all of us just unconsciously think I'll go home and just swipe on a machine on my sofa instead of going to the supermarket, a café or on a train and asking someone's number. We used to meet people in the workplace and that has become very charged, so I think for young and old people times are quite challenging when it comes to dating, finding mates and intimacy. Yet, I'm very hopeful.

What was your first step to deconstructing the shame and societally programmed fear around your sexual fantasies?

I think just bringing awareness to it. I really found myself struggling with it, not really having the courage to go deeper into it in conversation, especially not with men where I always find that if I say things like that they find me too hungry or I seem greedy or too sexual. Women are taught again and again that it’s better to let them lead and not really have sexual agency, desire or purpose. I still find that very hard, but I’ve been able to make a movie about it and then share that story and use it as a tool to start conversations with women and men.

The first step was basically to realise that this was a big issue in my life and that it was a metaphor for asking for what you want in general - not sexually. Who I am in general, in the world? I think sexuality is something we’re obsessed with as it’s such a taboo and a simple way to speak about emotions and inequalities. It's a huge problem because of the orgasm gap and women being taught that they shouldn't have any sexual fantasies or sexual desires, that they should just sit there and wait until someone picks them.

What’s your theory on why such specific stories speak to large audiences?

I think I can only really speak for my own movie, but I think that women want to see movies that they relate to and are at the centre of the story. From their perspective and in all its complexity, instead of creating stories where women are strong because they’re supposed to be feminists. There's a huge need for stories that show women older or the different layers of exploring themselves (the way men have been through movies, books, paintings and buildings, systems and everything for forever). It’s finally time for us to do the same thing, it's incredibly important that we explore strength in women and women as heroes, but also women as failures, vulnerable, corrupt, greedy, hungry, sexual, crazy, loving and warm. We all wanna play Richard III as well in Macbeth.

With the success and conversations around projects like 'Babygirl' and WANT, what would you like people to remember about this time?

I hope what myself, Gillian and so many women are creating at this moment contributes to women coming out of the corner where we’ve been hidden. Of course the deeply rooted ideas of what women should be and how they should behave are still among us, so I think there's so much work to do - especially now. It feels like we're not really moving in the right direction, but I hope that people remember from this time that these projects created were liberating, and they have a feeling of being connected to each other and making people feel less alone with taboo emotions. There's no shame in sexuality or in going after what you want. There's no shame in finding out what you need. It is all beautiful and everything should exist.

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