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After learning of his wife's flirtatious behavior, Dr. William Harford pushes himself on a harrowing and dangerous night-long odyssey of sexual and moral discovery.
At least Fellini pulled out the stops from the first minute when he wanted to get surreal. Here, realism fades into surrealism, then into outright foolishness. Morbidly paced foolishness.
The result doesn't begin to live up to such pomp; indeed, it is so deliberately paced and so strangely devoid of emotional stakes that maybe it proves that too much control isn't such a good thing.
In the final analysis, the marquee names are all that really distinguish Eyes Wide Shut from, say, a really well-photographed installment in the Emmanuelle series.
The film does have that advertised haunting quality, and at least one performance from Kidman, in a supporting, but vital role that's as good as any we're likely to see this year.
Maybe we should suspend the reductive question, "Is it any good or not?" and acknowledge that it's a fascinating, tantalising film that will continue to be argued about.
It's a movie you should see a second time to appreciate fully its themes of love and lust and trust and truth, but the idea of sitting through it again anytime soon may be about as alluring as eating a hairball.