One of the most anticipated films of winter 2025 starring Nicole Kidman and Antonio Banderas will start in Ukraine the other day.. Genre: erotic drama. And everything seems to be clear: “about sex and acrobatics, and other erotica”. But superficial assessments lead to boring conclusions, and that’s not what we’re here for..

Romy Mathias (Nicole Kidman) - CEO of a high-tech company. Everything is good in her life: her spectacular husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas), two daughters and a beautiful country house. And Romi’s whole problem is that she has long been unbearably bored with her husband in bed. After 19 years of marriage, she fakes orgasms, after which she indulges herself by watching porn.

It seems that the filmmakers decided to talk about vital matters, or rather, about sexual boredom in marriage. In other words, they decided to awaken the dragons dormant since the times of the French classics and openly inform society that women can also be interested in adultery. And sometimes even more than men.

One fine (or not so fine) morning the heroine sees a young man on the street (Harris Dickinson) aggressively taming a large dog.. At this moment, the viewer already roughly understands that it is this guy who will tame our dominant Romy Mathias, who, like most similar personalities, herself dreams of submission. However, it is precisely this shadow that provokes the transmission of dominance outward (but this is for another section). Anyway, this young man appears in the office as intern Samuel. Somehow, Samuel immediately sees Romy's excited involvement, as if he has a built-in radar for female dissatisfaction.. And for some reason he immediately understands that the lady boss dreams of dominance. Or maybe he just sees dogs in all ladies - they didn’t explain to us.

At first she resists his harsh manner of communication. In any case, relations with an intern are in the forbidden zone. But the viewer already understands that she will not be able to resist for long. He calls her “Babygirl” and helps her achieve an orgasm that Romi has not had in contact with a man for a long time..

Of course, the reversal of roles - she is his boss in the office, and he is her boss in bed - is intriguing and sets the dynamics of events, includes a sense of danger (as if we are missing it). And the film, it seems, even pretends to be an adult conversation about sex and roles in it, but to be frank, in terms of the erotic component it lags slightly behind, for example, “50 Shades of Grey,” which was spat on by every critic on the planet.

Yes, there is tension in the film, sexual overtones and its manifestation. And all the time you worry about the heroine, because now she is on the hook of a cunningly resourceful intern, who slightly begins to threaten his mistress with a visit to the personnel department.

And this is not the only reason why you should worry about her.. She has to meet Samuel in cheap hotels with unwashed linen. Also, it seems, at your own expense. In one of the scenes, he orders Romy to get on all fours and drink milk from a bowl like a dog... In short, so as not to talk too much and not spoil details: we were offered a story about niche preferences in sex, which are usually ordered as a service, and not built on. By the way, the scriptwriters did not provide Samuel with any related information. Before us is some empty character without history, family and friends.. All he has is arrogance, insight and a couple of mass-market suits. That is, the creators of the film “use” him as a tool and a trigger, and not at all as an autonomous character. He came to feed the main character's hungry demons, nothing more.

So what are we talking about here The film does not promise any grand revelations of sexual content.. Here, rather, it’s about what happens when you thoughtlessly and unexpectedly allow demons to unravel and allow them to live their best life. Their best life is not yours. Especially when the place of adventure becomes an office, and not a conventional hotel in Vegas (where, according to rumors, everything remains). And also about the fact that the sooner you get to know your devils, the less likely it is that they will escape without permission, which could leave your well-established life in blazing ruins..

Focus previously wrote a review of the film "