Curiously unerotic

Rating: Null/10 (11 June 2003)

Eyes Wide Shut is an adaptation of a short story, 'Traumnovelle' or Dream novel, by the Viennese early 20th century author Arthur Schnitzler. Its popularity was no doubt boosted by the tremendous advances in (and fashion for) psychoanalytic theories in Vienna at the time, and its central themes of infidelity, jealousy and sexual obsession were no doubt very potent and risque a century ago. The central flaw in Kubrick's film is that no-one, it appears, seems to have told him that these themes, like whale-bone corsets, don't set too many hearts aflutter in the late twentieth century.

Further to this is the strange choice of the leads, made no doubt primarily for commercial reasons at the time. Am I alone in thinking that Cruise and Kidman would have to be the most bloodless, unerotic pair of major actors in the cinema today? Kidman has a certain alabaster elegance but in the manner of the gallery exhibit, whereas Cruise has a strangely chaste and sexless perfection that suggests to me that he may be a lost Osmond brother. While not wishing either to speculate on the sexual life and experiences of the director, Kubrick's idea of sexual titillation is exactly what one would expect from a happily married man of 42 years. It is in short, an old man's tease of a movie, as devoid of real sexual spark as A Clockwork Orange was of genuine violence, despite all its arty perversity. If the mores of Schnitzler's novel had been up-dated to suggest that the couple was indulging in swinging, for example, and jealousies had arisen, then one might have had a more believable pretext for all of Cruise's mental torments.
Despite the central implausibility of the character's reactions to events, there are many fascinating details to enjoy. The minor players (Rade Sherbedzia for one) provide constant delightful menace, and the overall atmosphere of secret and dire deeds threads through the narrative brilliantly. Overall, a curate's egg. As an exercise in film craft, constantly watchable. As a psychological essay, slightly dusty, creaky and hampered by the rather sterile sexuality of the leads. 6/10