A Manhattan doctor embarks on a bizarre, night-long odyssey after his wife's admission of unfulfilled longing.
After his wife, Alice, tells him about her sexual fantasies, William Harford sets out for a night of sexual adventure. After several less than successful encounters, he meets an old friend, Nick Nightingale--now a musician--who tells him of strange sex parties where he is required to play the piano blindfolded. All the men at the party are costumed and wear masks while the women are all young and beautiful. Harford manages to find an appropriate costume and heads out to the party. Once there, however, he is warned by someone who recognizes him, despite the mask, that he is in great danger. He manages to extricate himself, but the threats prove to be quite real and sinister.—garykmcd
Dr. Bill and Mrs. Alice Harford are a young, upper middle class couple living in a lavish apartment along Central Park West with their seven year old daughter, Helena Harford. It's the Christmas season, and like they have been the past several years, they are invited to the annual lavish Christmas ball hosted by Victor Ziegler, one of Bill's wealthy patients. Based on their individual encounters at the party, which includes Bill secretly providing his professional services to a guest, Bill and Alice have a frank discussion, largely initiated by Alice, about their sex life, their sexual fantasies - most specifically if those fantasies include other people - and fidelity. As a result, Bill begins to notice those sexual opportunities available to him outside of their marriage. Although he contemplates seizing upon some of those opportunities, it's the one mentioned to him by Nick Nightingale - a former medical school colleague who dropped out to become a full time musician, and who was the pianist at Victor's party, where he and Nick were reacquainted - that piques Bill's interest the most. Bill's interest is probably increased by Nick's pleas for him not to follow-up on what he tells him. That opportunity is a secret, by invitation only party, the latest in a series, where Nick is hired to play blindfolded, with the party location divulged to him only one hour prior to his arrival. It was during a previous party that Nick saw beneath his blindfold that it was a sex party, all the participants dressed in costume and wearing masks, probably to provide anonymity to all the attendees. Bill is able to sneak his way into this latest party, which is even more elaborate than his wildest fantasies. But what happens at the party may irreparably affect his marriage, his sex life with Alice, and their lives in their entirety.—Huggo
Stanley Kubrick's final motion picture, which speculates on a doctor's discovery of his own health. The doctor wanders around the streets of New York City after his wife tells him that she had a recent erotic encounter with an alternative partner. His wife's revelation gives him simple ideas about freedom and betrayal.
A doctor becomes obsessed with having a sexual encounter after his wife admits to having sexual fantasies about a man she met and chastising him for dishonesty in not admitting to his own fantasies. This sets him off into unfulfilled encounters with a dead patient's daughter and a hooker. But when he visits a nightclub, where a pianist friend Nick Nightingale is playing, he learns about a secret sexual group and decides to attend one of their congregations. However, he quickly learns he is in well over his head and finds he and his family are threatened.—John Sacksteder <[email protected]>
Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), a young couple from New York, go to a Christmas party, given by a wealthy patient, Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack). There Bill runs into an old friend, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field), who dropped out of medical school and now plays piano professionally. While a Hungarian man tries to pick up Alice, two young models try to take Bill off for a tryst. He is interrupted by a call from his host upstairs, who had been having sex with a young woman who has overdosed on a speed-ball.
Next evening at home, while smoking marijuana, Bill's wife asks him if he had sex with the two girls. After Bill reassures her, she asks if he is ever jealous of men who are attracted to her. As the discussion gets heated, he states that he thinks women are more faithful than men. She rebuts him, telling him of a recent fantasy she had about a naval officer they had encountered on a vacation.
Disturbed by Alice's revelation, Bill is just then called on a house call to the deathbed of the father of a now-engaged female friend, who impulsively kisses him and tells him she loves him. Putting her off, he takes a walk down the streets of New York, and meets a prostitute named Domino (Vinessa Shaw), and goes to her apartment. Their encounter is awkward, but as they begin to kiss he is interrupted by a phone call from his wife, after which he calls off the encounter.
Bill goes to meet his friend Nick at the Sonata Cafe; there he learns that Nick has a later engagement that evening where he must play the piano while blindfolded. Nick tells him about the beautiful women he glimpsed when the blindfold slipped at the last gig, allowing him to surmise some of the goings-on. Bill presses for details. To gain admittance, one needs a costume, a mask and the password. Bill drives late at night to a shop called "Rainbow Fashions". Having been the doctor of the previous owner, he offers the new owner, Mr. Milich (Rade Serbedzija), a generous amount of money to rent to him now. Searching for a costume, the owner catches his teenage daughter (Leelee Sobieski) with two Japanese men and expresses outrage at their lack of sense of decency. He threatens to call the police.
With the costume, Bill takes a taxi out to a country mansion where a quasi-religious sexual ritual is taking place. One woman comes to Bill, takes him aside and warns him that he does not belong there. He then meets another girl in whose company he walks through a few rooms where an orgy is taking place. The first woman catches up with Bill and insists he is in terrible danger for they suspect that he is an outsider. Bill is then interrupted by a masked porter who tells him that the taxi driver who is waiting outside wants to speak with him.
However, the porter takes him to the main room where the masked, red-cloaked Master of Ceremonies confronts Bill with a question about a second password which Bill is unable to answer. The Master of Ceremonies insists that he "kindly remove his mask", then asks that he remove his clothes. The masked young woman who had tried to warn Bill now intervenes and insists that she be punished instead of him. As she is taken away, Bill asks what is going to happen to her. The Master cryptically replies her fate is sealed and Bill is ushered from the mansion and warned by the red-cloaked Master not to tell anyone about what happened there.
Just before dawn, Bill arrives home guilty and confused, where his wife Alice is now awake and tells him of a troubling dream in which he and she were in a deserted city without their clothes. She felt frightened and ashamed while he went off to try to find their clothes. After he left, she felt better, finding herself, still naked, in a beautiful garden. The Naval Officer emerged, stared at her, and the two of them began making love surrounded by many other couples doing the same. She then started having sex with many of those men and laughing at the idea of Bill seeing her with them.
The next morning, Bill goes in search of Nick. After he locates his hotel from the nightclub owner, the desk clerk (Alan Cumming) there tells Bill that a bruised and frightened Nick had checked out a few hours earlier after returning with two large, dangerous-looking men. The clerk also mentions that Nick tried to pass an envelope to him when they were leaving, but that one of the men noticed this and intercepted it, then Nick was driven away by the two men in a limousine parked outside the hotel, with no mention as to where they were going.
Before going to work, Bill goes to return the costume and the shop proprietor, with his daughter by his side, states he can do other favors for Bill "and it needn't be a costume". The Japanese men leave; Milich implies to Bill that he has sold his daughter for prostitution. Bill has misplaced the mask, so is billed for it. Bill returns to the mansion in his own car and is greeted at the gate by a man with a typed note warning him to cease and desist his inquiries. At home, Bill thinks about Alice's recounting of the scene while he watches her tutor their daughter.
That evening, Bill goes to the home of the prostitute with a gift. Her roommate greets him, telling him Domino has just discovered she has HIV. Bill leaves and notices that a well-dressed man is following him. After losing his pursuer, Bill reads a newspaper story about a beauty queen, Amanda Curran, who had died of a drug overdose. She is the Mandy he had treated at Ziegler's party. He goes to the hospital, claiming to be her doctor, and examines her body in the morgue.
Afterwards, Ziegler summons Bill to his house and tells him he knows all the events of the past night and day. Ziegler was one of those involved with the ritual orgy and his own position with the secret society has been jeopardized by Bill's intrusion. Bill is now concerned with the death of Mandy, whom Ziegler has identified as the woman at the party who'd "sacrificed" herself to prevent Bill's punishment, as well as the disappearance of Nick. Ziegler insists that Nick is safely back at his home in Seattle but does not know where to contact him. Ziegler also insists that the "punishment" had nothing to do with Mandy's death; she was a junkie, and she really has died from another accidental drug overdose. Bill clearly does not know if Ziegler is telling him the truth, but he accepts it anyway.
When Bill returns home, he sees the mask he had rented on his pillow next to his sleeping wife. He breaks down in tears and as Alice awakes, he decides to tell her the whole truth of the past two days. The next morning, they go Christmas shopping. His wife muses that recent events do not define their life and they should be grateful they have survived and are still together and that she loves him. She then says they need to, in her own words, "f**k" as soon as possible.
