Faithfully yours

Rating: Null/10 (25 July 1999)

Nicole Kidman buck naked from the rear and then sitting on a commode to urinate. A last line destined to be famous for being both descriptive and obscene. What kind of sexploitation is Stanley Kubrick up to. But this is not any director, this is Kubrick the master and there is method to his madness. His last film, "Eyes Wide Shut", follows the lineage of hyperbole and unconventional presentation that we remember so well from "Dr. Strangelove" and "Clockwork Orange" to "2001 - A Space Odyssey" to "Full Metal Jacket". Kubrick has fittingly chosen his finale to be, hold-on-to-your-hat, positive on the institution of marriage, and he has chosen the hippest, most glamorous married movie couple to do his bidding, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. How unpredictable but how well thought out. This is a slowly-evolving, long (almost three hours) but truly satisfying story of two people's quest for love and fidelity in today's society. Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise), wife Alice (Nicole Kidman), and daughter Helena would seem to epitomize the successful family. He, a medical doctor, with lots of money and patients in New York City; she the beautiful and loving wife and mother. But as we learn from a Christmas party they attend, Dr. Bill is not above hitting on two lovely models and Alice, intoxicated with champagne, is easily seduced by a scoundrel on the dance floor who believes marriage to be an invention to lose one's virginity so that the woman can carry on affairs with whomever she pleases. In a long and well-played scene that says a lot about how men feel about women and how women feel about men, Alice is irritated that her husband never gets jealous of her and confides to Bill that she romanticizes in dreams about an affair with a naval officer she briefly met last summer. Infuriated, Bill proceeds to go out on the prowl late at night in New York City and has as much calamity as Griffin Dunne did in "After Hours". Women everywhere seem to have the hots for him and everyone tempts him in their own special way. Kubrick is not above throwing in a male hotel clerk with much sexual innuendoes. The most suspenseful and elaborate part of the film is the sexual ceremony in a secluded mansion that Bill innocently stumbles upon through a close friend. Comparisons are in order to the hot water Cruise suffered in "Risky Business" but more so in a deadly and moralistic way. Again, Kubrick has paired the two most believable people to play Bill and Alice and both Cruise and Kidman do a superb job of acting. So what do we learn after sitting through a mind-boggling exercise in trusting one's marriage partner? I think Kubrick would say that relationships are not forever, but with an open mind and a loving heart, they can be as permanent as one is willing to make it. A last bouquet from Kubrick and such a romantic and hopeful one it is