VENICE — Nicole Kidman brought her erotic drama Babygirl to the Venice Film Festival on Friday, saying she felt exposed and nervous as the controlled intimacy of the set gets projected onto the big screen before a global audience.

Ms. Kidman has made a string of risqué films throughout her career, including Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, which premiered in Venice 25 years ago. But she told reporters she was highly anxious about the reaction to her latest movie.

Ms. Kidman plays a successful New York Chief Executive Officer, Romy, who jeopardizes both her career and her family by having a torrid affair with a young, opportunistic intern.

“Making it with these people here, it was delicate and intimate and very, very deep,” said Ms. Kidman, sitting alongside the director, Halina Reijn, and fellow stars Antonio Banderas, who plays her husband, and Harris Dickinson, her lover.

“But this definitely leaves me exposed and vulnerable and frightened … when it’s given to the world,” she added. “We’re all a bit nervous, so I was like, I hope my hands aren’t shaking.”

Shot by a female director, Babygirl brings a woman’s gaze to the erotic thriller genre as she explores Romy’s darkest fantasies that she cannot fulfil within the confines of her apparently successful marriage. “I’m very delighted to be able to make a film about female desire, but it’s also a film about a woman in an existential crisis, and it has many layers,” said Ms. Reijn, whose earlier movies included the 2022 comedy horror Bodies Bodies Bodies.

Babygirl reveals profound differences in the ways younger and older generations view sex in a city where political correctness reigns.

“I think there is in general a confusion about how to … conduct yourself within sex as well,” Mr. Dickinson said, praising the work of the intimacy coordinator who helped the actors overcome their natural boundaries.

“It’s always nerve-wracking constructing a scene anyway, so then you add something intimate to it and it’s very vulnerable,” he said.

Setting the tone for the film, Babygirl opens with a close-up on Ms. Kidman as she fails to achieve an orgasm with her husband, launching her search for satisfaction elsewhere.

“The huge orgasm gap … still exists, people. Take note, men,” Ms. Reijn said to laughs, adding that she hoped her movie would “function as a tribute to self-love and liberation.”

Ms. Kidman, who won the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours in 2002, has worked with many of the leading male directors of her generation, but she said she decided some years ago to promote women filmmakers, like Ms. Reijn.

“I’m going to put my weight behind a lot of women now, in terms of directors, to try and change the ratio,” she said.

Six of the 21 films in the main competition at Venice were directed by women, including Babygirl. Last year, five out of 23 competition movies had female directors. — Reuters

VENICE — US actress Angelina Jolie had to learn how to sing opera to prepare for playing Maria Callas, one of the greatest sopranos of all time, saying last Thursday that it was the most demanding role of her career.

Maria, directed by Pablo Larraín, chronicles Ms. Callas’ final days in Paris when she was addicted to anti-anxiety drugs. It recalls the high and low notes of her tumultuous past when she wowed audiences around the world with her astonishing voice.

“This is the hardest, the most challenging role,” Ms. Jolie told Reuters ahead of the movie’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival later in the day.

“I was like on another planet because it was so beyond what I was comfortable with as a person and as an artist,” she said, recalling scenes shot at Milan’s famous La Scala opera house.

Ms. Jolie has appeared in more than 60 films, including action-packed blockbusters and emotionally charged dramas, winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1999 movie Girl Interrupted.

She had told Mr. Larrain that she could sing, but then realized she needed to reach a whole different level, taking seven months out to train for the role.

“I thought I could sing like people sing in film, you pretend to sing or you sing a little. And it was very clear early on that I was going to really have to learn to sing because you can’t really fake opera,” she said.

Mr. Larrain has said that when Ms. Callas is heard in the film in her prime, 95% is taken from the soprano’s original recordings, but when we hear her at the end of her life, it is mostly Jolie’s own voice we are listening to. “She did a lot of singing lessons, incredibly, and sang from morning to night. We were really touched, we cried during the shoot,” said Alba Rohrwacher, who plays Ms. Callas’ adoring housekeeper.

Mr. Larrain said he had grown up listening to opera and hoped his latest film would encourage people to explore an art form that has lost much of its public appeal since Ms. Callas’ death in 1977 aged just 53.

“We really hope this movie creates an interest towards opera, whatever the number of people, be it five people, 10, a million or more,” he said.

Mr. Larrain’s previous movies include Jackie and Spencer, biopics about Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana, other strong women who left their mark on history. Ms. Callas was one of the biggest stars of her day but lived her last years in isolation, deserted by her great voice and her lover Aristotle Onassis.

“I share her vulnerability,” Ms. Jolie said, alluding to her own troubled personal life, locked in a bitter divorce from actor Brad Pitt, who brought his latest film to Venice at the weekend, ensuring they won’t cross paths in the lagoon city.

Mr. Larrain said Ms. Callas had a tragic sense of life, with 90% of the opera she sang on stage ending in death. “She slowly became the sum of the main tragedies she sang,” he said.

Maria is one of 21 movies competing for the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, which runs until Sept. 7. — Reuters