A CEO getting turned out by her twunk intern. A two-timing dirtbag troubadour. A girlie haunted by the horny spectre of a seven-foot Transylvanian vampire. At the movies, Christmas is for fucking other people.
On 25 December, a triad of films, ones that seem to disrupt the traditional festive movie calendar with their distinctly anti-festive themes, will all open in US theatres. There’s Babygirl, the Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson-starring, button-pushing erotic thriller about a tech boss in an orgasm-starved marriage who goes full freak with the hot new intern. From Robert Eggers, we have Nosferatu, anchored by Lily-Rose Depp entangled in a strange, push-and-pull relationship with an intoxicating and evil vampire, all while her husband (Nick Hoult, low-key cucked) tries haplessly to stop it. Then, in A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan carries the weight of the world’s expectations as an iconic musician, all while juggling two women: Joan Baez and Sylvie Russo, a pseudonym for his real life partner, Suze Rotolo.
The infidelity movie is nothing new. Oftentimes, some of cinema’s greatest shitheads have been born from them. See the work of Franz Rogowski’s Tomas, the bisexual adulterer of Passages. In Gone Girl, Amy Dunne won out over her cheating husband by disappearing and framing him as a murderer. Heck, even Kidman herself has played an adulterer who experiences the consequences of her actions, in Gus Van Sant’s black comedy To Die For.
Polycules are on the cover of magazines and the tech guy from your office is ‘GGG’ on Feeld.
In each of those cases, the instigators of infidelity got what was coming to them, be it via death or retribution (getting kicked to the curb). But in this festive trio, cheaters win. Babygirl frames infidelity as a net positive for Kidman’s character Romy: a release she’s long been searching for that she only discovers by turning her back on her hot husband Antonio Banderas. For Nosferatu’s Ellen, the dark side of herself is the one that succeeds, as she gives in to Count Orlok’s red flags. And in the end of A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan is… well… Bob Dylan; Baez ceremonially dumped after giving the musician his big break. A prick but brilliant.
With these three films bringing a different kind of Christmas cheer to the multiplexes, it seems like mainstream cinema is catching up to a kind of pervy chaos that has long dominated the arthouse. It’s also a smart temperature-check at a time when polycules are on the cover of magazines and the tech guy from your office is “GGG” on Feeld.
What if, as these films present, fucking someone else will unlock the parts of yourself you’ve long been hiding? Maybe, like Romy, you’ll finally orgasm; or like Ellen, you’ll transcend to a new realm?
It’s not a victimless act, of course. Please don’t take this as a kind of psychopathic permission to make someone else’s life a misery. But if you do find yourself at a loss this Christmas, bored of your family, away from your partner, and feel like causing chaos – perhaps you should make like Bob Dylan and instigate a side thing with an old flame from your high school years. You’ll either ruin your life or become a generational icon.
