Eyes Wide Shut (contains spoilers)

Rating: 8/10 (27 December 2006)

I can honestly say this is the most unusual Christmas film I have seen. However I watched it on Christmas Eve and the action all takes place during advent. There are some jolly characters in red cloaks but no beards but they are taking part in a somewhat satanic prelude to an orgy and they soon drop the cloaks to reveal that is all they are wearing apart from the occasional thong.
And the viewer/voyeur is sometimes invited to see the nudity through the eyes of a doctor  Dr Bill Harford  first the naked body of an unconscious woman whose life he saves and the naked body of an apparent suicide victim And for all the nudity, Bill Harford's sexual encounters are all unfulfilled. His initial encounter with Domino (a name which presages the "fancy dress" masked orgy he later attends  is interrupted by a telephone call from his wife (curse these mobile phones!) He himself turns down the offers of his deceased patient's daughter and a fancy dress shop owner who offers him his underage daughter "for anything the doctor orders!" And at the satanic fancy dress orgy he sneaks into, he is teased and then caught and sent off with a warning.
There film is also a thriller in the more traditional Hitchcock sense of the term. There seem to be two murders but the good Doctor drops all his investigations and accepts the unlikely explanations of his rich client who turns out to have been behind one of the masks. In the end he is content to go back to his beautiful wife and keep his eyes wide shut.
The dialogue transcript is available online but the URL cannot be posted here. Try Google!