The film shows us affluent married couple Tom Cruise, a doctor, and Nicole Kidman at a Christmas Party, during which he flirts with two models (and later revives the host's prostitute girlfriend, who has overdosed) and Kidman gets tipsy in the hands of a mysterious foreigner who does his damndest to get her away for a quickie. The experience leads to a later conversation, during which Kidman gets stoned and cruelly informs Cruise that she once was so overcome by desire for a stranger that she would have given away everything - husband, child, life - to be with the man. Cruise's buzz is
stripped, and stunned, he walks the streets of New York, bouncing from sexual odyssey to sexual odyssey.
The picture is ham-handed and shows a Stanley Kubrick not only painfully reliant on one trick in his bag (the endlessly repetitive floating tracking shot), but hopelessly out of touch with modern sexual issues. On the plus side, he does make a passable New York City out of London.
Having read the Vanity Fair piece on Kubrick after his death, his disconnection with his subject matter is not unexpected, in that he appeared to have been a semi-recluse with little romantic experience.
Cruise and Kidman are like some 1950s couple dressed in 90s garb. After his wife's revelation, Cruise is menaced by the recurring image of her being ravished by the stranger, as if a wife sharing her fantasy with her husband is some great cataclysm. Yet, he
is strangely immune to the manner in which Kidman mocks and taunts him with her fantasy. Her cold and unloving manner - she roils on the floor pointing at Cruise, doing her level best to castrate him with her secret - appears to be no problem for Cruise. Rather, it is the image of someone slamming his wife that drives him batty.
As for Kidman, she's just a mean icy twist. We are introduced to her naked, then on the john, and things pretty much go downhill from there.
Then there is the plot, which is non-existent, making for a droning, tedious ride. Cruise does his damndest with what he's given, and he doesn't make a hash of it. He is particularly effective early, when he performs the minuet of explaining to his wife why he would never bedded the two models. She summarily shreds his rationale.
Kidman, however, is consistently awful throughout, forced to play drunk at the party, stoned during her humiliation of Cruise, and then, in a completely over-the-top bit, frightened by a sexual dream she experienced. She hits all the wrong chords, her drunk being sloppy, her stoner being vicious, and her post-dream persona annoyingly overwrought. This is a performance ruined by bad choices on her part.
Kubrick's other forays into the pastiche of modern sexuality fail. The man who would get Kidman away for a quick hump at the Christmas Party is an unintentionally hilarious Hungarian. Any minute, you expect him to say, "I vant to suck your blood." The prostitutes who entice Cruise from NYC streets are Kate Moss hot, with hearts of gold to boot. The famed orgy scene is chortle inducing (everyone wears goofy yet frightening masks).
And if you were not inclined to laugh at certain parts, the film is accompanied by perhaps the most distracting soundtrack ever scored - a single note piano plinking that can make giggles into snorts.
I understand the film is based on an older work. It could have used a younger director. I was reminded of the incongruity of presumably celibate Catholic priests who advise young parishioners on marital issues. Including sex.
