“I hope my hands aren’t shaking,” confessed Nicole Kidman, as she began to take questions on her film Babygirl during its official press conference Aug. 30 at the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival. “This role definably leaves me exposed, vulnerable and frightened.”

To those familiar with the work of the Golden Globe-winning actress, the concept of fear and apprehension seem surprising for a woman who constantly walks the high wire in her film choices — inhabiting such varied roles as a Parisian chanteuse, a murderous news anchor, an eccentric witch, a Russian mail order bride, an evil museum taxidermist or even a Stepford wife.

But in Halina Reijn’s erotic thriller, the 57-year old actor ups the risk factor playing Romy, a high-powered tech CEO, who harbors a suppressed desire concerning her relationship to sex. When a young intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson) enters her professional life, the primal forces of her secret threaten to upend her job as well as her relationship to her devoted husband (Antonio Banderas) and their two daughters.

“It’s about your inner thoughts. It’s about secrets. It’s about marriage. It’s about truth, power, consent. So language for sex, it’s so complicated,” she continues when queried about our own societal language skills to talk about sex. “This is one woman’s story, and this is, I hope, a very liberating story. It’s told by a woman through her gaze, which is in Halina’s script — she wrote it, she directs it — and that’s to me what made it so unique: that suddenly I was going to be in the hands of a woman with this material, and it was very, very deep to be able to share those things. It was very freeing.”

Historically Hollywood has been somewhat introverted when dealing with the grit and grime of sex. While films such as 9 ½ Weeks, Body Heat, and Fatal Attraction gave permission for audiences to emotionally explore uncharted cinematic sexual territory, it was Reijn’s mentor, Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct), who navigated her into that space, especially from the female gaze.

Just as she deconstructed the zombie genre with her imaginative Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, Reijn has upended the erotic thriller where the female is no longer the victim or antagonist; merely the vessel for sexual desire.

“That doesn’t mean that the film is not also about masculinity,” she adds.  “It deals with femininity, masculinity, power, control, sexuality, and all those different things. And I think at the core of it, for me, it is about the question, can I love myself in all my different layers? And I hope it will function as a tribute to self-love and liberation.”

The film received a seven-minute standing ovation after its Lido premiere inside the Sala Grande. As for the rest of the world, the film is set to be released Christmas Day in the United States, followed in January to the rest of the world.