MOVIES

If you read only the synopsis of Babygirl before seeing it, you might imagine it's an erotic age-gap thriller about the workplace power dynamic between men and women.

- STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

1. Babygirl

That's part of it, sure. But Halina Reijn's exuberant third feature goes deeper than that, exploring the ways in which human beings—especially women—often want things they don't know how to ask for. Nicole Kidman gives a live-wire performance as Romy, a buttoned-up executive who falls under the spell of a seductive intern (Harris Dickinson, a bedroom murmur in human form). There's so much we don't know about desire, particularly in perimenopausal and menopausal women, and almost nobody wants to talk about it—except Reijn. The movie's centerpiece, built around George Michael's “Father Figure,” is one of the most rapturous sequences put to film this year, a celebration of what it means to finally, or at least temporarily, know yourself.

2. All We Imagine As Light

Everywhere you look, there are women living on their own, making their lives work in spite of long hours at their jobs, thwarted love, loneliness. In Payal Kapadia's gorgeous study of friendship and the tensions that sometimes come with it. three women in modern Mumbai chart their own bumpy roads: Prabha (Kani Kusruti), a nurse, is married, but she hasn't heard from her absentee husband in years. Fellow nurse Anu (Divya Prabha) is secretly involved with a Muslim man, which she must hide from her Hindu family—and just about everybody—at all costs. And Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) is an older hospital worker who loses her home because the property's paperwork is in her late husband's name. All of these women have come from small villages to work, to make money, to do things their own way. Kapadia captures the texture of their lives, as well as the glittery, gritty poetry of the city around them.

3. The Seed of the Sacred Fig