I’m going open with the disclaimer that is used halfway in my favorite review video (‘Babygirl’ is hot cringe | movie explained);

I’m going to spoil the entire plot of Babygirl!

And also, spoil the ending of Fight Club (1999)

“Spoiling” as in telling the story. Not as in taking away the fun or its value.

So if you have not seen Babygirl yet, and are someone who does not want to know how the story ends, then leave now.

(…)

Okay, there we are.
And yet! Even though you THINK you know how this movie ends, because you’ve seen it with your own eyes?
Be prepared to be blown away, because I am going to offer you an entirely different take on it, which I have not heard a-ny-where.

And my guess is it will take two decades before 2045’s YouTubers and others, are going to settle on its final meaning.

Before I continue I think a lofty, mind-expanding idea should probably come first.
Before discussing Babygirl’s 2024 face-value ending, as well as the ending 2045’s YouTubers will be seeing in it.

This lofty concept is;
The probability that Art takes over and tells its own story. 

This can be either in the form of the character, or it can be in the form of the movie itself. Where in hindsight a story or interpretation comes through that is not what the scriptwriter, director or actors intended.

I’m gonna propose that, because I have not heard any of the people working on this film giving this take on it, it was the story itself, or Art itself, that created it.
That the ending is, as will be concluded by half of the YouTubers two decades from now by people still in diapers today, totally different than the ending, or the whole entire movie, as we see it today.
We’re too close to the product, this is going to require distance.

So that concept comes first;
Whether or not you’re gonna see something beyond the most clear cut and DEMURE
– Hello 2045 Googling this review!
– Yes that word was a thing in 2024!
– I know right?!
– Hm hm…. But it does offer an explanation of why 2024 had such conservative ideas about this movie’s ending. We are in our collective norm-core phase.

But I digress.

Whether or not you’re open to see beyond this movie’s most obvious interpretation, is going to determine if you find this thesis about the movie useful or not.

So, then first off, what is this most obvious interpretation of the ending of Babygirl?
What is the ending?

FACTS about the ending we can actually SEE on screen:

fact 1 – Romy returns home
“After” (this is interpretation already, since we have no conclusive evidence their affair has ended) having had an affair with a young company intern who was a “soft dom” to her, and who had no trouble making her come (as opposed to her husband);
Romy has after all, returned to her husband.

fact 2 -Romy still has sex with her husband
They now count to five before they have sex, and he turns her around on her belly just like her lover, and makes her come in the same way her lover did.

fact 3 – There is talk about the young lover Samuel having migrated to Japan. We do not see proof this actually happened.

fact 4 – footage of Samuel bare chested in the hotelroom he booked for him and Romy, but now he’s playing with the black dog from the beginning of the movie.

It is this fourth fact, that will put the movie into a whole new perspective, decades to come.
Because what are we looking at?

The most conservative interpretation is that Romy is now wildly satisfied with her husband and that she thinks back of Samuel, not because that is required to make her come, but that it is a symbol she carries around in her mind, about what the affair means to her.

A slightly less conservative interpretation is that Romy is now able to come with her husband, but only because she plays this movie in her head of Samuel playing with the dog.
In other words, her husband may have caught up in terms of what she physically needs, but she still relies on the memory of Samuel to come.

And yet!
Both these interpretations are bypassing something crucial;
We have not seen images of Romy’s inner world anywhere else in the movie, other than memories!
If we’re supposed to interpret these frames as being not reality, nor a memory, but an actual erotic fantasy, a glimpse of Romy’s inner world that is not a memory (as presented to us throughout the movie in the form of childhood memories);
Then wouldn’t it make sense we had already seen fantasies before?

And why were we not presented Soft Dom fantasies at the beginning at the movie, but were they externalized in the form of Romy having to watch porn?

Does it make sense that after an entire movie where we see either A. reality or B. childhood memories;
We’d now suddenly get a whole sequence that is not reality, nor a memory, but a fantasy?

Let’s say for a moment that this (Samuel and the dog in the hotelroom being not reality but Romy’s fantasy) is the correct interpretation, then the closing sequence either:
-wants to suggest she now finds with her husband what she once found with Samuel and ALL IS WELL
If this is the case, then after having it watched twice, their closing scene in bed has not convinced me.
I’ll be on the lookout a third time, but to me counting from 5 to one, and being turned on your belly, is does not even begin to cover the complex sexual desires and needs Romy had.
She’s hardly more fulfilled than she was at the beginning.
OR
-the movie suggests that she can come because she has created a sexual fantasy in her head.
By combining the elements of the dog on the street with Samuel, together with the hotelroom she once saw Samuel in.
This is not a super satisfying ending (I think) but I think it is an ending that is palpable to most!

Before I get even deeper into explaining this ending, in a way that will probably remain dormant for another two decades, I do want to say that the current ending, INCLUDING the things that I may suggest are “flawed”?
– which is absolutely not my intention, I’m simply trying to analyse it without judgement-
well, that ending was necessary.

I can’t see this movie having been passable to any major financiers if Romy had ended up rocking her sex life with Samuel on the side or divorcing her husband and rocking who she is.
For example, by informing a new date beforehand what she wants, or signing up for a specialized dating website for people with their preferences.

I think Romy ending up alive and her affair going without punishment, was the maximum that was attainable for a big budget film in this genre, at the moment.

So even though I will finish this piece, and dig a little deeper on why I think Babygirl has a hidden message or a hidden ending;
That is not because I think Babygirl could have been made better today. 

But in a more liberal era, how would Babygirl have ended, and why?
Well, Babygirl, in its first 90 minutes, is a hero’s journey.

But a full hero’s journey would have had Romy going through the fire of facing her shame and coming out on the other side anew!
Reborn!
And owning her sexuality as a “soft submissive” or even more accurate, someone who needs a dominant partner. Which, in my opinion, is wildly different from a partner who plays he is dominant. But that is an entirely different story.

So I’m not saying the movie is flawed in any way.

What I say is that I think the movie skillfully maximized what is possible for a big budget movie covering this material, today.
And that I think The Universe, or Art itself, or perhaps the creators DID put it in deliberately! –
But that outside of the January 2025 conversation, there is a possibility of something hiding in plain sight here.
About the ending.

So let’s continue.

Recapping the (face value) ending; Samuel is out of the picture, Romy has returned to her husband and they’re happy in bed. Although it’s possible Romy still needs to think about Samuel and the dog, in order to come.

But what if, just like the rest of the movie, the frames with Samuel and the dog in the hotelroom are not a fantasy at all, but simply facts?
Then, we have a whole different ending.

First the dog: Is it the same dog that walked around loose on the street in the meet cute scene between him and Romy?
Certainly looks like it!
This would mean the meet cute was a set up.
And that Samuel, together with a friend who would “play” the owner of the dog, setup Romy to watch him calming the dog down.

But, perhaps more importantly, it would also mean that Samuel is not in Japan and that he still visits the hotelroom he booked for him and Romy.
Is he still her lover?
Or is he in the hotelroom because he is playing the same tricks with other women?

And what is it about Romy very explicitly telling off her male colleague when he tries to blackmail her into having sex with him –
“If I want to be humiliated I’ll pay somebody to do it.”

If you watched the first office party of the movie, you’ll see her and the man exchanging looks.
In particular with that last scene, this suggests he was her lover first, and that he humiliated her too, as part of their affair.
That she’s dealing with telling off a former lover, and not a new suitor!

But then the specifics of her choice of words:
“If I want to be humiliated I’ll pay somebody to do it.”

And the next thing we see is Samuel waiting in a hotelroom with a dog?
Samuel, about whom we have no evidence that he actually went to Japan?

Doesn’t that make it very likely that Romy and Samuel found an arrangement where she pays him?
That the Japan story was just a decoy?

What I like about that interpretation – that the hotel/dog scene really happened, and that it is still part of Romy’s reality – is that it gives Romy a REAL Hero’s Journey!

One not confided by 2024 Hollywood standards.

Because then she has come out to her husband about who she is, but she also allows herself to have Samuel as her lover.
Whether or not they have decided to make that a financial arrangement.
With that interpretation of the ending, Romy has found true sexual liberation.

And then there’s another interpretation possible. This is not a Hero’s Journey, but it is supercool, and will blow your mind.
Here we go;

It is that Samuel was an illusion to begin with.

That just like the movie Fight Club, Romy may have seen him on the street, and that he could even be in the group of the company’s new interns;
But that he is not real.

In the movie Fight Club, the narrator befriends “a man” called Tyler Durden. But it turns out to be a fantasy, which he created based on the image of a man he spotted on the escalator.

This is the way “Tyler” (the imaginary friend) explains it to the narrator.

You were looking for a way to change your life.
You could not do this on your own.
All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me.

So in my opinion, the most revolutionary cinematic thought will not come from the ones who interpret that final scene of Samuel in the hotelroom with the dog as real!

Yes, they will be the ones saying that the Japan transfer never happened, and that Romy still has Samuel as her younger lover.
And they will argue about what the dog in this final scene means for their meet cute.
If this scene is real, then the dog is real, was the affair all staged?

Revolutionary, yes.
But it’s not the biggest Blow Your Mind.

No, the reason this movie could end up a cult classic is because if we are to interpret the final hotelroom dog scene as a fantasy;
It means everything, can be a fantasy.

—–

{ new paragraph, added a day later 12 January 2025: }

It gets even more interesting if we would re-watch the movie from the concept of there being two Samuels:
One real, and one imaginary with whom she has an affair.

The Samuel asking a bold question in the group of interns;
The one showing up with Esmee at the party;
Showing up at her house with the laptop;
The one at work in the bar;
The one who fights her husband and maybe even the one at the rave or the one who orders her milk;
Could be the real one. 

Obviously taken aback by her jealous, hysterical behavior in several of these situations, and probably setting himself up for an affair but then it didn’t really start until the rave or the pool.

But the one who offers her a cookie, stands with her in the elevator, leaves her a note on her desk at night (just like she puts notes in the backpacks of her children);
Shows up in the hotelroom wearing a hoodie (just like her daughter);
The one who has sex with her in the first hotelroom (and a mirror image of when she was alone);
And the one she has appointments with in the sound-proof room?
Is her imagination.

And Romy explicitly says she wasn’t part of the mentor program, remember? 😉  

Even Esmee’s confrontation scene where Esmee, just like “fantasy” Samuel, is super contained and dominant telling her what to do, could be a fantasy. 
Just like several Fight Club analyses claiming that it was not just Tyler  Durden who was imaginary; So was the girlfriend, Marla Singer.
She was based on someone he probably also only saw once.

I have no idea how this lens of watching it from the perspective of reality and fantasy mixing, will hold up when I see it a third time.
But it kept haunting me, after having written this post yesterday.
And it would explain a difference in how Samuel holds himself around Romy: sometimes very strong, and sometimes he seems confused by her. And also dressed in a completely different way.

Very curious to see how others will take on this subject of reality versus imagination, in the upcoming decades.

—-

(picking up the story; )

This movie could end up a cult classic because if we are to interpret the final hotelroom dog scene as a fantasy;
It means everything, can be a fantasy.

It means the movie does not depict reality, but we see Romy’s distorted sense of it.
Just like we saw in Fight Club.

And both movies use a one-frame/ one-image technique, where we see just one frame for a memory, or a clue about what’s going on.
That is a technique used in no other movie I know.
Coincidence?
I don’t think so.

If you were 30-ish when Fight Club came out, then you are Romy’s age by now.

And I’ll be damned, if you are not looking for a way to change your life.

I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck.
I am smart, capable, and most importantly,
I am free in all the ways that you are not.

Welcome to Babygirl.

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers
20th century writer, diarist & yoga teacher

Hungry for more?
Previously in the Babygirl series:
But will it satisfy the spoiled ones? | pre-screening musings
and
Babygirl (2024) get Hollywood on its knees
+
On my other blog:
liberate now | What Do Rock Stars Need To Hear Today 2025 01 06
And I created a video:
Rock Star Take On SEXUALITY

“A Hidden Hero’s Journey? Or Tyler Durden reimagined?”
is expected to be my final post about the movie Babygirl.

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