Maybe it’s the time of year, but I’ve been thinking lately about Nora, the whirling, frantic heroine of Henrik Ibsen’s work A dollhouseShe spends too much on Christmas presents, quietly manages her household in unseen ways, and gets caught up in happiness and achievement that can only dissipate. Relationships can take a lot, the piece claims, but not false intimacy—not the pretense of something that should be sacred. A dollhouse also highlights how easy it is to fall into a trap when playing a role, especially one that is generously rewarded.

Romy (played by Nicole Kidman), the unexploded bombshell around whom the new film revolves Baby girl is being built is one of Nora’s heirs. This also applies to Helen (Keira Knightley), the wife of the grinning politician and dutiful mother of twins in the Netflix series Black pigeonswho happens to be a spy operating deep in secret. Both Baby girl And Black pigeons are set at Christmas time, which is why I can argue that the former is the most honest Christmas film – not a cheery fable about a chubby intruder, but a fierce portrait of a woman balancing right on the edge. And so Black pigeons And A dollhouseThe film focuses on someone who is simultaneously intent on blowing up his “perfect” life while also trying to protect it at all costs.

Since Halina Reijn’s film premiered at the Venice Film Festival this summer and Kidman won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, Baby girl has sparked a debate about the exploration of desire, deception and power. Romy is the immaculately poised and incredibly tense CEO of an automation company whose pioneering work in robotics and artificial intelligence seems almost too pretentious. Romy is optimized, right down to the subtle Botox injections that limit her expression and the high-femme power suits in dark pink that mark her as a compassionate girl boss. But is she human? While she is attending her Christmas party in the office, her husband’s theater premiere (of Ibsen) is attended Hedda Gabler), then her family’s Christmas dinner in their picture-perfect home outside of New York City, Romy fluidly switches between different identities. Neither feels authentic, at least until a messy affair with the unsettling, slightly tomboyish Samuel (Harris Dickinson) encourages them to try out a kind of role-playing game that’s entirely new.

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A lot has been made of it Baby girlIn the film’s sex scenes, Samuel, who is both disturbingly fearless and bizarrely intuitive, senses that Romy wants someone to dominate her – not out of humiliation and degradation, but as an expression of caring. In the film’s opening moments, Romy sits astride her husband and simulates an orgasm before rushing to her laptop to indulge in what really turns her on; She packs lunch for her two daughters, wearing a rose-patterned apron and tucking in handwritten notes that will surely put them to shame. She sits in her corner office and welcomes a new class of interns, including Samuel. Each of these roles is about caring for others, but Samuel understands how much she longs to give up control, to no longer have to make decisions, and to be strictly told what to do. Reijn, who also wrote Baby girleasily suggests that Romy’s freewheeling childhood in a cult explains her eroticization of authority, but Romy’s willingness to take risks seems to be more than that: it’s the only way she can criticize her idealized existence. “There has to be danger,” she explains at the end of the film, trying to understand what she really wants. “Things must be at stake.” The shift between safety and survival is the most fascinating element of the film. As Nora says to an old friend A dollhousefaced with the possible revelation of their secrets: “Something wonderful is going to happen! … But also terrible, Kristine, and that just can’t happen, not at any price.”

From this perspective, Kidman’s performance as Romy lingers long after the final act; It’s a disturbing mix of reserve and abandon, tense composure and elemental devotion. The film is part of Kidman’s series of works in which she embodies artificiality before imploding it upon viewing. As an actress, she too seems drawn to risk and the freedom and fulfillment that comes from surrendering to another person’s creative vision. Before becoming a director, Reijn was a classically trained actress, including playing an “unkempt and suicidal” Hedda Gabler (as one profile put it), before developing crippling stage fright in her late 30s. What she and Kidman seem to be trying to say with Romy is that no loneliness is deeper than realizing that you don’t know yourself at all – and that the comforts and milestones you once longed for have become anchors, that threaten to drag you into the depths.

Helen (not her real name), Knightley’s undercover agent Black pigeonsShe operates in much the same space as Romy and Nora: her family is a giant lie that she will fight to the death to uphold. The Netflix series written by Joe Barton (creator of the underrated crime thriller). Giri/Haji) is a darkly funny, thrillingly violent and ridiculously self-aware yarn about underground crime networks, diplomatic crises and espionage. How Baby girlBut it’s also about human connection and the unbridled joy of being with the people who make you feel most like yourself. Helen is a member of a private spy syndicate called the Black Doves, run by an elegant woman named Mrs. Reed (Sarah Lancashire). Unlike spies who serve their country, the Black Doves work for cash and sell secrets to the highest bidder. When Helen was recruited, it was because Reed sensed that she was a thrill-seeker with a flair for violence and a cool head in a crisis. For ten years, “Helen” has been married to a Conservative MP who is now Defense Minister, gives birth to his children and steals his files. In the first episode, we learn that (a) she had an affair to free herself from the constraints of her make-believe everyday life, and (b) her lover was murdered, setting off a trail of bloody retribution and the near-constant threat of exposure. (Trying to maintain her triple life nearly gets her killed at one point when her daughter FaceTimes her while Helen is hiding from assassins.)

Barton seems to enjoy juxtaposing the banality of Helen’s life as a wife and mother — impeccably hosting her husband’s Christmas party, adding jewels to a crown for a nativity costume — with the flamboyant action of her secret life. Helen has been styled (apparently intentionally) to look exactly like Kate, Princess of Wales: hair in long, loose waves; dressed in an endless array of expensive sweaters; and smiled, smiled, smiled. In one scene, Reed describes Helen as “a winding spring,” and the performance of festive cheer is so committed that you can only faintly feel it cracking around the edges. When Helen is in danger, Reed calls in her former work partner Sam (Ben Whishaw), and his collaboration with Helen is, at least for me, why the series is so much fun. “Hello, darling,” Sam says to her right after blowing the head off of one of her attackers with a shotgun. Helen, covered in more blood than Carrie at the prom, collapses with joy and gratitude. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she sighs.

Black pigeons The best way to appreciate it is to not think too hard about the logical holes in the plot and just enjoy the spectacle. But there’s also a lot more to Helen than you’d expect from the genre: more compassion for how suffocated she is by her marriage of convenience, her own perfect display of domesticity, her unexpectedly tender impulses as a mother that ruin her ability to simply be herself just to take care of them work. The show’s most ruthless bosses are all women – Reed from Lancashire, Kathryn Hunter as the wormy, sinister director of a league of assassins, Tracey Ullman in a cameo I won’t spoil – which suggests they’re all privy to secrets . For Helen, however, her false life has become so dominant that it suppresses her identity as a separate person. “I wake up sometimes and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, Sam, because I have no idea who I am,” she says in one scene. “And neither does anyone else.”

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In the end, Black pigeons suggests that Helen, like Romy, may be better off at home, but that her fearlessness and willingness to take risks have shown her what she actually wants. At the end of the series, when Helen is confronted in a store by an intruder who has tried to break into her family, she strangles him with a pearl necklace – the symbol of class and status – and then releases her, screaming: “I am always nor Helen Webb.”, and Helen Webb Don’t stab girls in jewelry stores on Christmas Eve.” I laughed at the line and at Knightley’s royal meltdown. But it also seems to signal that all of Helen’s adventures have led to her better understanding and accepting herself. This change is made possible by Sam actually seeing her and, better yet, seeing someone worth getting to know. It’s the kind of validation that can make up everything else in their lives and their Christmas – the strategizing, the emotional regulation, that smiling– simply much easier to bear.

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