Eyes Wide Shut

Tom Cruise - Bill Harford
Nicole Kidman - Alice Harford
Sydney Pollack - Victor Ziegler
Todd Field - Nick Nightingale
Jackie Sawris - Roz
Leslie Lowe - Illona

Eyes Wide to Shut stars ex-Hollywood couple Tom Cruise and his then wife Nicole Kidman, it is also the last film from Stanley Kubrick, the enigmatic director died just weeks after the final editing. Dr William Hartman (Tom Cruise) gains entry to a sinister masked orgy in a country house by giving the doormen a password he has acquired by dubious means. The uninvited doctor is admitted to a scene of men in capes and women wearing little but high heels, thongs and masks. Betrayal of the secrets of the gathering could result in death, it is darkly hinted. While security for Eyes Wide Shut has not been quite on this scale and death does not necessarily await those wrongly admitted to the inner circle, efforts have been made to keep the plot under wraps until the opening. So is the secrecy protection of the film's integrity or subtle hype for a wobbly product?

We meet a doctor and his wife (Nicole Kidman) as they dress for an evening out at a glossy New York party thrown by a wealthy consort with a taste and the money for beautiful young women who can't handle their drugs. There, the tipsy Mrs Hartman is approached by a persistent eastern European Lothario while two dizzy models try to tempt Dr Bill upstairs. Back home, Mrs Hartman talks of an imagined infidelity and interrogates her husband about whether he lusts after his patients. When he is called out to a dying patient he finds a beautiful and emotionally hungry daughter. He is propositioned by an amenable prostitute and the underage daughter of a fancy-dress shop owner. The film hinges on the sort of solemn orgy scene familiar from the 1970s. Everyone must wear a mask. Everyone must know the password. Is a sacrifice planned? The doctor's Yellow Cab waits outside with the meter ticking. Sex, jealousy, fidelity, betrayal, and masks are the themes.

Kubrick has had his triumphs (2001, Spartacus, Dr Strangelove) his controversies (A Clockwork Orange), and his less successful adventures (Barry Lyndon). Admirers may see Eyes Wide Shut, based on a 1920 Viennese novel, as the "haunting Masterpiece" of the publicity material. Detractors may look for references in the earlier works from the likes of Nagisa Oshima (Ai No Corrida) and Nicolas Roeg (Bad Timing). Eyes Wide Shut has been promoted as the film of the decade that would take our understanding of sexuality further. It doesn't. There is always a risk with films featuring masks that there is nothing underneath. Dring filming Harvey Keitel was replaced by Sydney Pollack, while Jennifer Jason Leigh was replaced by Marie Richardson despite having shot all her scenes.
Review© Duncan Campbell.