Welcome to upper-middle class angst with Bill and Alice.

Rating: 9/10 (16 August 1999)

That clever cheeky bugger Mr. Kubrick knew what he was doing when casting top line stars Tom and Nicole in his final masterpiece. He was aiming for a wide audience, specifically hetero couples and that he achieved. With the presence of the stars this movie will reach its audience in suburbia. That's were I saw it and the cinema was full of couples. At the end of the movie you could hear a pin drop as we all filed out with our heads hanging down in either astonishment or outrage paranoia. I viewed this movie with my wife and never have we discussed a movie so deeply afterwards. But the discussion went beyond the movie as we dwelled into our own relationship. Were do you draw the line between sexual fantasy and realism? Do men go beyond the point of sexual fulfilment? Or are men just a natural hunter in search of a prey that normally is its own self? Dr. Bill, (Tom), goes on a primitive hunt to satisfy his urge of curiosity after his wife Alice tells him of a sexual fantasy she had about a sailor. While hers was a fantasy, (or was it?), his will be reality, (or is it?), for revenge purposes. Instead Dr. Bill is lead on a crusade that takes him on a journey beyond his outer-comfort-limits. He enters a sexual world that only man can wish for and only receive in dreams. Kubrick succeeds in challenging the Hetero world with questions that need to be looked into deeply. As with all Kubrick films the images range from straight narrative to the surreal when it is necessary. This is mostly Dr. Bill's perspective that left him with eyes wide shut during the orgy sequence. Tom's performance as Dr. Bill was one of his finest. At first he seems out of his depth but you soon realise that his performance is based on the social appearance of pretence that is soon replaced by the personal and strong performance when he discovers Alice's fantasy and is swept away in the journey. Nicole is brilliant in a small but important role. In the end I had to laugh at Kubrick's brilliance. Maybe I misread it but the movie was left open for any interpretation. As far as I'm concern, a movie is the patient and the audience the Therapist.