Kubrick's last attempt at a conventional Hollywood film

Rating: 7/10 (29 November 2005)

Reading much in the tabloid press about the controversy and lies told about this film's production I was surprised to find, on watching it, that none of the rubbish was actually true. Kidman and Cruise make a halfway decent couple in this film, although one gets the impression particularly from Cruise's acting that he suffered far too many takes going wrong but aside from that, Kidman looks lovely and completely at ease with being pictured in the way that Kubrick portrays his film women - mostly naked but in a strangely non voyeuristic manner.
That said, all the classic Kubrick touches are there. The sumptuous ballroom scene at Ziggler's and the equally beautiful masked party scene; liberal use of female nudity (seen in many Kubrick films, including The Shining, Clockwork Orange and occasionally in Barry Lyndon) but with a continental eye on it (as its incidental to the plot), little touches which crop up again and again (the well-lit Christmas tree, Cruise's ill-fated attempts to have sex as a means of getting back at his wife's revelation and the parties of the rich and successful (and masked)). Also there is the Kubrick trademark long tracking shot down a corridor and his use of nudity to shock. Kubrick was an incredibly talented and creative director who will be sorely missed by his fans.
The plot is as complicated as ever. Cruise plays an ordinary suburban doctor whose former art dealer wife makes an uncomfortable revelation about an encounter she had on one of their holidays. Then Cruise, answering a call from a client/friend to attend to her dead father, finds himself dwelling over and over again on his wife's real or imagined infidelity as he travels around. He meets a succession of characters; a prostitute whom he almost sleeps with, a piano player in a jazz club who tells him about a masked party in another part of the country which he is playing at and then a costume supplier and his unruly daughter, followed by the anticipated so-called orgy sequence in which Cruise is, oddly, out of place and is 'rumbled'. The rest of the movie concentrates itself on Cruise trying to find out what went on at the party and whether the girl who 'sacrificed' herself for him really did.
The only problem with me regarding this film was Cruise's acting. It is, at times, quite tired and he never gives a feeling that he is in any danger or his family are and he is concerned about it.