Romy (Nicole Kidman) can’t climax. At least not with her husband of many years, Jacob (Antonio Banderas), although she delivers a fairly convincing performance for his benefit. This bit of commonplace sexual theater makes up the bold opening of writer/director Halina Reijn’s daring and provocative sexy psychological thriller “Babygirl.”

Theater is a running theme throughout the film, from Jacob’s career as a stage director, mounting a production of Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” (Reijn, a former actor in her native Netherlands, once starred in a production of the play), to the thematic — and then literal — role-play in which Romy engages. “Babygirl” is the story of how this role-play figures into Romy’s journey to finding her own pleasure, which is ultimately the journey to discovering the most authentic version of herself.

Romy is a boss, a wife, a mother. She plays every role to perfection — in feminine business wear, steely yet accessible; in a ruffled apron, serving up pancakes to her husband and daughters; in lacy lingerie, the pliant yet enthusiastic lover. But Romy is uncomfortable in her own skin, agitated and anxious. She seeks relief in high-tech wellness rituals, therapy, cosmetic procedures. She yearns to shed herself like a second skin.

Enter Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a newly hired intern at Romy’s company. She first spies the lanky, doe-eyed young man on the street, soothing an out-of-control dog with a cookie and a murmured “good girl.” Later, he’ll alight Romy’s synapses in a similar fashion, sending her a glass of milk at a work happy hour, paired with a whispered “good girl,” knowing that these are the two magic words that might drive a woman like her wild.

Like magnets, they are drawn together, almost wordlessly embarking on an affair that revolves around his dominance and her submission, in which Romy connects with her own sexual pleasure — and power — in a halting, then exuberant role-play. She writhes in agonized embarrassment under his unyielding gaze, but complying with his orders, she surrenders her self-consciousness like a layer of clothing, emotionally naked and finally free.

“Babygirl” is made in the mode of the erotic thrillers that dominated the 1990s: a high-powered executive entering into an affair with a seductive young subordinate, the relationship liable to topple everything. There is a danger in what it could do to Romy’s life and career, a powerful female CEO held up and admired as a role model for younger women, like her ambitious assistant Esme (Sophie Wilde). However, there is more danger for Romy in admitting what, exactly, she wants. She needs the destruction because the alternative is being destroyed.

Reijn uses the blueprint of the erotic thriller and the subgenre’s inherent elements of danger and high-stakes sexuality to unfurl her treatise about female pleasure as an intellectual and emotional pursuit as much as it is physical. For Romy, sex is a mind game more than anything else — “something has to be at stake,” she desperately tries to explain to Jacob. But Reijn reorients the sexual point of view, focusing on sexual pleasure as a means of evolution — the true self-optimization is embracing one’s deepest darkest desires wholeheartedly.

Kidman and Dickinson deliver exquisitely layered and unpredictable performances (as does Banderas, who gamely plays the third to this scorching hot pairing). Kidman is flinching and vulnerable, her Romy desperate for relief from her own mind. Dickinson’s mercurial and mysterious Samuel is the key to everything for her, and the audience. He always has a little smirk, like he knows a secret, and he does, naturally intuiting Romy’s kink.

Samuel’s superpower is his radical honesty, his openness and lack of shame. He embodies the utterly modern and nonjudgmental ethos of Reijn’s script, articulated in a terrifically written conversation between the two of them about consent. Set in a drab office, it is not a ravishing set piece, but the writing and performances are riveting, simultaneously a “cards on the table” moment, a mutual agreement to their relationship and a part of their role-play.

Reijn’s film speaks visually and sonically as much as it does with dialogue, in two centerpiece scenes set in different hotel rooms that demonstrate the dynamic between Romy and Samuel, in which Kidman and Dickinson dance around each other (and the camera) in a tantalizing tango of give and take. She might end up on the floor, or perhaps reclining in a chair enjoying her paramour’s seductive strip tease, his torso undulating in time to George Michael’s “Father Figure.”

Reijn and the actors let us in on this intoxicating pas de deux, bravely baring not just the physical intimacy but the intimacy of personal desire, where faking it is never an option and honestly is all there is. The erotic thriller is back, and it’s never been better than in “Babygirl.”

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‘BABYGIRL’

4 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong sexual content, nudity and language)

Running time: 1:54

How to watch: In theaters Dec. 25

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