Writers : Arthur Schnitzler (novel)Stanley Kubrick (screenplay) ...more
Release Date : 16 July 1999 (USA) more
Genre : Drama Mystery Thriller more
Plot : A New York City doctor, who is married to an art curator, pushes himself on a harrowing and dangerous night-long odyssey of sexual and moral discovery after his wife admits that she once almost cheated on him.
Synopsis
Bill and Alice Harford (Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman) are a wealthy professional couple living in Manhattan. He is a doctor with his own private practice and she is unemployed though she has managed an art gallery in the past. They attend the Christmas party thrown by wealthy attorney Victor Ziegler (Sidney Pollack). While Bill flirts with skinny models, Alice dances and flirts with an unctuous Hungarian (Sky Dumont). He attempts to seduce her but she declines because she is married. Meanwhile, Bill is called into Ziegler's private bath. Ziegler had been partying with an escort, Mandy (Julienne Davis). When she shot up a mixture of heroin and cocaine, she passed out, scaring Ziegler. Bill rouses her back to consciousness then chides her about getting into rehab. Ziegler makes Bill promise not to mention the incident to anyone.
Alice is troubled by their individual flirtations with other people at the party. The next night, she rolls a joint and they get stoned. She asks Bill if he had sex with the models the previous night. He denies it but asks about the man she had been dancing with. She says he wanted to have sex with her, which Bill says is understandable. Alice interprets this to mean that she would only be interesting to men if they wanted to have sex with her and begins a discussion about fidelity and sex drives. When Bill claims that women require love before they can have sex and that he has never been concerned she would cheat on him, Alice laughs. She tells him about a fantasy she has had about throwing away her married life in exchange for cheap sex with a naval officer she once saw in a restaurant while with Bill. Bill is called away on a house call but is troubled by visions of Alice being ravished by the faceless naval officer.
The house call is to attend to a recently deceased patient. The patient's daughter, Marion (Marie Richardson), confesses to Bill that she is deeply in love with him and needs to be near him, even if she will never get to see him. Bill politely declines her advance, telling her that she is distraught and confused by her father's death. Walking home later, Bill sees a hooker making out with a john and continues to be plagued by images of his wife being unfaithful. A group of drunken young men accuse him of being gay for no reason. When a prostitute, Domino (Vinessa Shaw), propositions him, he reluctantly agrees. Before they can have sex, Alice calls. He lies that he is still at the patient's house but is unable to go through with the session after hanging up.
Continuing his walk, he passes the Sonata Club, where a former colleague at medical school, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field) plays piano. Bill decides to stop in to listen. Nick had also played at Ziegler's party. He reveals that he is scheduled to play piano at a sex party later that night. When Nick takes a phone call telling him where the party will take place, Bill hectors him for more details -- he wants to attend. Nick reveals that the orgyists usually wear costumes. Even though it is after one in the morning, Bill goes to a costume shop and persuades its owner, Milich (Rade Serbezija), to open and rent him the appropriate costume. In the costume shop, they discover Milich's daughter (Leelee Sobieski), clad only in underwear, cavorting with older Japanese men. Her father chases her out and tells the men he call the police -- as soon as he has served Bill.
On the way to the party, Bill continues to fantasize about his wife with the naval officer. Using the password supplied by Nick, he gains access to the party, held at a remote mansion on Long Island. The party features cloak- and mask-clad men and women performing quasi-religious rituals before retiring to watch or participate in a variety of sexual acts. One of the women takes Bill by the hand and, leading him through the house, warns him to escape while he still can because his life is in grave danger. Soon, Bill is uncovered as an interloper to the party. The other party members put him on "trial." Then, the woman who warned him to leave him pledges herself in exchange for Bill's release. Bill is allowed to leave but warned that, were he to inquire about the party or what happened there, he and his family will suffer dire consequences.
Bill returns home at dawn, guilty and confused. He hides the costume in a locked bureau in his office. He awakens Alice from a nightmare in which she had been dreaming about mocking him while having sex with multiple men at an orgy. Bill is further disturbed by his wife's dark sexuality. He learns that Nick left town early that morning. He checked out of his hotel accompanied by two men, and appeared to have a bruise on his face. When Bill returns his costume to the costume shop, but the mask is missing. Milich's daughter and the older Japanese men appear. Milich's daughter is still in her underwear but her flirty demeanor is replaced by a glassy stare. Milich makes clear that he now pimps his daughter. Bill returns to the site of the party, where he is given a note -- addressed to him, although he never told anyone at the party his name -- that again tells him to stop trying to learn more about the previous night's events.
Bill cannot get Alice's dream of orgiastic infidelity out of his head. He lies to her about having appointments at his office after dinner one night. He goes to see Domino but when she is not home, he tries to seduce her roommate (Fay Masterson). Instead she tells him that Domino has disappeared after learning she is HIV+. Bill reads in the New York Post that Mandy, a former beauty queen, was found dead of a drug overdose in a hotel room. Using his doctor's credentials, Bill goes to the morgue to confirm the body is hers. He realizes that she was the one who tried to warn him during the orgy and now fears that she died to protect him. Ziegler calls Bill to his apartment. Ziegler pleads with Bill to stop trying to find out more about the orgy. Ziegler was one of the attendees himself and saw everything that happened at the party and since then because he was the one who had Bill followed. He tells him that beyond voyeurism and sex, nothing untoward happened at the party. All of the warnings and the trial, Ziegler suggests, were staged to frighten Bill into keeping quiet. The people who held the party are important, powerful people who want to protect their privacy. They found Bill and his identity out because of his own sloppiness, not through any evil designs. Nick is safely back in Seattle; Mandy wasn't killed to save Bill, she was simply a prostitute who had a bad drug problem.
Bill returns home. He finds his mask from the orgy lying on his pillow next to Alice. He breaks down and tells her everything. Alice cries over what she hears. Then they take their daughter Christmas shopping. In a private moment, Bill asks Alice what they should do. She is grateful that they have survived their recent real-life and dream-life flirtations with infidelity, but stops short of promising eternal love and faithfulness on her part. In the meantime, she suggests, they should fuck.
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