Pack your No-Doz.

Rating: 3/10 (25 July 1999)

Kubrick was a recluse, and only a recluse could create a film whose sexual sensibilities are so firmly and convincingly lodged in the 1950's. How else can we fathom a premise made ludicrous by the sexual revolution of the last 30 years: that the husband portion of a cosmopolitan, wealthy, and beautiful pair, married many years, is impelled to expore layers of sexual debauchery merely by his wife's recounting of her sexual fantasy about another man?
Debauchery of the sort imagined by Kubrick is either common as house dust(prostitution) or untitillating (incomprehensible and unerotic rituals in a Story-of-O sort of mansion). What is the message the film is conveying through the use of all this sexual dullness? That we should look before we leap? Cherish what we have? Be careful of compromising our moral spheres? If this was Kubrick's essay on moral ambivalence, I give it a "D" for failure to establish a convincing premise, a useful narrative thread, or any meaningful message.