July 19, 1999 -- Stanley Kubrick ("2001: A Space Odyssey") recently passed away, but he did not quietly fade to black. Instead, he bequeathed us a new movie, his first in 12 years, bathed in light and bellowing with sexual frustration.

Kubrick's life may have been ebbing away as he finished this film, but his eye for images had not dimmed. "Eyes Wide Shut" glows with light in an era when too many films are too dark. There are scenes in this film in which the background lighting is overexposed so that the images lose their shape in a halo of glare, as in some of his other films, such as "Doctor Strangelove." The ultra-luxurious sets in much of the film also reminded me of another Kubrick film, "Barry Lyndon."

Perhaps Kubrick meant to shed some light on the subject of sex. Tom Cruise stars as Bill Harford, a medical doctor who uses his title like a crutch to help him get through life. All through the film he keeps announcing that he's a doctor and he shows people his license to prove it, but what he's after, a title can't provide.

Hartford has taken his lovely wife, Alice (actress Nicole Kidman, his real wife) for granted. A casual conversation after a party turns intense and revealing. Alice tells Bill that she has had sexual fantasies about another man. This turns Bill's world upside down, because he assumed she was satisfied with her luxurious life as the wife of a successful doctor and that's all she wanted.

Bill struggles to get a grip on this new reality. He has to change his thinking about the sexual nature of women, and he needs to be more honest with his wife about his own sexual needs and fantasies. A chance encounter with an old friend, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field of "Twister") and an encounter with a prostitute sends Bill off into a wild night of adventure.

Bill stumbles across a strange sexual cult in which everyone wears masks to conceal their identities. He is threatened if he reveals what he has learned. The next day, Bill tries to make sense of what happened. He tries to find the truth, but all clues turn into dead ends.

In the end, his experience is no different than his wife's dreams and fantasies. They either have no meaning at all, or they are filled with meaning, depending on whether or not he learns anything from them. The clues are enigmatic. Was a young woman killed or was her death an accident. Did someone kill the piano player? We don't know and maybe it isn't important. Kubrick liked enigmas and in this film he has certainly left us with some interesting enigmas.

There are some good performances in the film, highlighted by Kidman, who sizzles in an emotionally powerful role. Syndney Pollack is great as Victor Ziegler (actor in "A Civil Action" director in "The Firm" and many other films). Pollack does a fine job of portraying menace and corruption under a thin guise of charm.

One thing that really irritated me about the film was the musical score. Occasionally, someone would hit a particularly annoying piano key with the force of a sledgehammer, then they would hit it again and again, faster and faster. This was done over and over during the course of the film. Once would have been plenty.

As advertised, the film has plenty of skin. We see many partially clothed men and fully nude women (frontal, back and sideways). It is the old double standard in the way the "R" rating is enforced. Perhaps in some countries you can see this film the way it was supposed to have been shown, but not in the U.S., at least not now.

Is this Kubrick's best work? I don't think so, but it is certainly in keeping with his tradition of creating enigmatic films with emotionally isolated characters. This film rates a B.

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