I found it liberating when I first took a much younger lover – but called the police when he ended up tapping on my window… as Nicole Kidman’s Babygirl hits cinemas, LISA HILTON reveals the double-edge sword of older women’s age-gap affairs

He was an awkward mix of swagger and insecurity, strikingly handsome with blond hair and beautiful green eyes. He was also 23 years younger than me.

I wasn’t his boss, but we did meet at a work event — and it wasn’t until we’d been talking for about half an hour that I realized he was trying to chat me up.

The relationship that started that night lasted six months; and while it was much more important to him than it was to me, it also changed what I thought I knew about myself.

He was a confidence booster and a revelation in the bedroom, but he also shone an uncomfortably revealing light on my character.

I’m appalled by the way older men objectify younger women, but here I was, doing the same thing to him – until the balance of power tipped and I started to wonder what I’d gotten myself into.

The idea of ​​an older woman having ‘liberating’ sex with a younger man is a hot topic right now. From Anne Hathaway playing an almost 40-year-old single mother who falls in love with a 24-year-old in The Idea Of You, to Miranda July’s hit novel All Fours (in which a woman has a sexual awakening with a youthful lover), Not to mention the fact that the fourth Bridget Jones sees her take a lover 28 years her junior, it feels like the taboo surrounding the age gaps between younger men and older women is being completely broken.

But it’s Nicole Kidman in the recently released Babygirl that really gets tongues wagging.

Directed by 49-year-old Dutch actress Halina Reijn, the film stars Kidman as Romy, whose seemingly perfect marriage and career are disrupted by the tension – and threat – of her relationship with a 20-something intern, Samuel.

At first, the power imbalance is clear. Romy is the hugely successful CEO of a technology company and married to Jacob, a prominent theater director (Antonio Banderas). Her life looks like something out of a glossy magazine, from her two glamorous homes to her achingly chic wardrobe.

But Romy has a secret, described by Reijn in an interview as ‘an inner beast that she cannot tame’.

Despite a seemingly enthusiastic sex life with her husband, she is unable to orgasm with him and instead secretly masturbates to pornography involving bondage and sexual submission. Romy is a woman who controls every aspect of her life and fantasizes about being dominated.

Enter Samuel, whose irresistible attraction comes from his ability to sense a desire that Romy can barely admit to himself.

As she finds herself embroiled in an affair, Romy hesitates about that power imbalance – and yet, as Samuel reminds her, he can blow up her entire life with a single phone call. Kidman gives a raw, compelling performance that has already won her the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival, while Oscar rumors swirl.

However, critics are divided on how erotic this erotic thriller actually is. While some are excited that Babygirl is the new Fifty Shades Of Grey, others suggest that the supposedly transgressive sex scenes are actually quite tame. What gives the film its edge, however, is not the level of explicit sex, but the nuanced questions the film raises about power. Personally, the movie brought back some eerie and uncomfortable memories of my own experiences.

When I met my love, at a drinks party for food writers, I was in my late forties and he in my early twenties.

To be honest, his interest that evening surprised me. I had been mostly single for the eleven years since my divorce and thought I had forgotten how to flirt, but after a few glasses of wine I found myself responding.

But when he asked for my number, I assumed he was just being polite. But he called the next day (later explaining that calling someone instead of messaging was a huge task for people his age, a nuance I wasn’t aware of), and we met for dinner.

Like Samuel in Babygirl, he was a mixture of bravado and hesitation, acting as if it was a foregone conclusion that we would end up in bed, but he seemed to expect me to take the lead. I did that and it was exciting.

After the first night I really didn’t expect to see him again. It had been fun and I felt more attractive and carefree than I had in a long time, but I was surprised when his interest continued.

It wasn’t long before we were ‘officially’ dating, but I was never completely relaxed in the relationship.

For starters, I was met with disapproval from friends who felt the age difference was inappropriate. I appreciated their honesty, but it made me feel self-conscious in social situations.

More than one friend brought up the issue of money. I’m far from rich, but as expected I earned more than him.

To me this wasn’t really a problem – he was always scrupulous in paying his dues and generous within his means – but the suggestion was made that he was trying to take advantage of the imbalance, which made me feel stupid and sloppy, as if I was an opportunistic gigolo and I was a middle-aged fool.

Physically he also made me quite nervous, but not for the reasons you might expect.

I’m in my late forties, have had a child and am, I hope, quite realistic about my appearance. My body and my face are not what they used to be and I accept that. Moreover, he was always complimentary and his enthusiasm for sex left me in no doubt that he found me desirable.

What concerned me was his appearance. He was strikingly striking: tall, blond, with incredible cheekbones and beautiful eyes, and he turned heads whenever we went out.

I was conflicted about this. Part of me appreciated its genuine beauty, but at the same time I felt fascinated by it, just like Romy in the film. I was also aware that I was ignoring personality conflicts between us that would have bothered me more if he hadn’t been so stunning.

When we were alone, the age difference seemed invisible, but it became glaringly obvious when I tried to integrate him into my life. Our cultural references were very different: comical when it came to music or movies, less so when it came to privacy.

Like most of his generation, he lived much of his life online, and we had several arguments when I saw him going through my emails. He couldn’t understand that I saw this as a gross invasion of my privacy. His attitude was: ‘who cares if you have nothing to hide?’

I also didn’t like that he posted pictures of us on social media, which I don’t use. (He found this very strange, even suspicious.)

When we ate with my friends, I found myself taking him into account as if he were a child, and sometimes felt embarrassed when he faltered in conversation.

It wasn’t his fault, but I finally had to admit to myself that I just wasn’t taking him seriously. I objectified him, patronized him, and I didn’t like it.

Just when I realized we had no future, he started pushing us to move in together.

We had had great times, but I certainly didn’t want him in my house or in my life permanently. I had seen our dalliance as a light-hearted adventure, while he had seen it as an important relationship.

It seemed to me that he was becoming more and more invasive and controlling, and I really identified with Romy’s shock and sadness when Samuel broke into her house in the film.

At the same time, I felt terrible, guilty and hypocritical, as if I had used him in a way that I would have hated if the situation were reversed.

I tried to end things in a friendly manner, but he became combative and aggressive and bombarded me with accusatory texts. One night I woke up terrified and saw him tapping on my bedroom window. Drunk, he climbed over the garden wall and demanded I let him in. Instead I called the police.

It was a horrible way to end the relationship, and while there was absolutely no excuse for his threatening behavior, the situation didn’t feel black and white. Much later I received a final message from him, in which he apologized profusely. At the end he wrote, “All I ever wanted from you was your attention.” Chilling, but also a reminder that I had been dismissive of him because of his youth and attractiveness.

This is one of the elements of Babygirl that I found most fascinating: the change in the relationship between Romy and Samuel.

At one point in the film, Samuel dances shirtless for her, showing off his flawless skin and toned body. We feel Romy’s lust and his power to act on it, but as viewers it is also unnerving: do we have the right to ‘pervert’ him in a way that would be reprehensibly exploitative if he were a woman?

Samuel is cocky and arrogant, but sometimes naive and insecure, which is as much part of his appeal as his confident demand that Romy be milked on her knees.

It seems surprising that a woman’s relationship with a younger man can be seen as shocking in itself. After all, celebrities and high-profile figures like Sam Taylor-Johnson, Brigitte Macron and Joan Collins, to name a few, have much younger partners.

Perhaps the truly disturbing aspect of Romy’s character is her drive for destruction, the thrill of risking her job and family. Samuel offers a complete contrast to her daily life, not only in what they do, but where they do it (a series of dingy hotels; an unlikely rave).

Romy is constantly ‘performing perfection’, as a wife, mother and wife. One of Babygirl’s most revealing scenes is when we see her getting Botox – another element of the facade she feels obligated to present.

Kidman’s willingness to strip her own image as a Hollywood star to the bare bones adds power to the sense of reckless rebellion her character achieves in Samuel, intoxicating because it gives the lie to everything Romy should want.

It’s a feeling of both liberation and self-sabotage that I certainly identified with in my own relationship with a younger man, albeit in a much less significant way.

Director Reijn describes her film as a conversation with blockbuster erotic thrillers from the nineties, such as Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction. But Babygirl asks much more challenging questions about unequal relationships.

Did Romy use Samuel, or is she a victim? More broadly, is it possible for women to recognize and embrace the darkest elements of themselves?

In the film, Romy’s young assistant Esme is aggressively disappointed when her boss fails to live up to her own idea of ​​what a powerful feminist should be, and perhaps that, and not the sex scenes, is the key to Babygirl’s erotic charge . Sex is powerful and liberating, but it can also be complicated and even frightening.

As I discovered in my own relationship, desire can sometimes be alarmingly blind.