Yes, believe it or not, this one's a Christmas movie. This excerpt from Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas explains why:
At a Christmas party, Manhattan physician Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) are sexually propositioned, separately; she turns down her suitor because she's married, but he seems to send his away only because he is called into service when the mistress of the party's host (Sydney Pollack) overdoses in the bathroom.
The following night, Bill and Alice smoke pot and ask each other about the events of the night before. They argue over whether or not men and women think about sex differently, and Alice admits that, years earlier, she saw a Naval officer when she and Bill were vacationing in Cape Cod. If the officer had wanted to, she would have thrown away her kids and marriage just to make love with him one time; not having done so, however, made Bill dearer to her than ever before. This revelation sets Bill off on a tour of New York's sexual underground, from a chat with a prostitute (Vinessa Shaw) to an encounter with an erotically precocious young girl (Leelee Sobieski) to a mysterious orgy outside of town.
Stanley Kubrick's final film is most often remembered for pairing the then-espoused Cruise and Kidman in a movie that addressed strong sexual themes in the context of marriage, but Christmas weaves its way through the film from start to finish, as does a murder mystery that might or might not involve the woman whose life Bill saves at the party. Kubrick underlines his story's ambivalence about marriage, home and family by unspooling his tale in a season of familial warmth and closeness. There's a perverse sense of humor about the movie -- on the night after the party, Bill finds sexual opportunity around every corner, but when he goes out again actively looking for it, all doors slam in his face. Since Kubrick preferred to shoot everything in England, there's a certain fakiness to his Manhattan -- it's certainly not as lavishly lit as the real thing is around the holidays -- but Eyes Wide Shut is nonetheless a provocative movie that seems, like many of Kubrick's films, to get better with each passing year.
Fun facts:
Kubrick was said to have considered Steve Martin for the lead role.
Kubrick includes several self-referential moments in the film: a sign reads "Bowman" and one of Bill's patients is named "Kaminsky," which were the names of two of the astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey; a VHS cassette of Full Metal Jacket is visible in Bill's apartment; the mask Bill wears to the orgy is modeled from the face of Ryan O'Neal, star of Barry Lyndon; Blume in Love -- directed by Paul Mazursky, who made his acting debut in Kubrick's Fear and Desire -- airs on a TV set.
Eyes Wide Shut is generally considered to be the longest continuous shoot in film history; Cruise and Kidman signed contacts tying them to the production for as long as Kubrick needed them, but Harvey Keitel and Jennifer Jason Leigh both dropped out due to commitments to other films. They were later replaced by Pollack and Marie Richardson.
Check out the rest of Movieline's 12 Films of Christmas as they're revealed this week and next.