Eyes Wide Shut - Plot

Plot

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). Bill meets an old friend from med school, Nick Nightingale (Todd Field), who now plays piano professionally. While a Hungarian man (Sky du Mont) 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 Mandy (Julienne Davis), a young woman who has overdosed on a speedball.

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 to the deathbed of the father of a now-engaged female friend (Marie Richardson), who impulsively kisses him and tells him she loves him. Putting her off, Bill takes a walk and meets a prostitute named Domino (Vinessa Shaw), and goes to her apartment. His wife phones as he begins to kiss her, after which he calls off the awkward encounter.

Meeting Nick at a cafe, Bill learns that Nick has a following engagement where he must play piano blindfolded, in which Nick claims to have glimpsed beautiful women. After Bill presses for details, he learns that to gain admittance, one needs a costume, a mask and the password. Bill drives late at night to a costume shop. He offers the owner, Mr. Milich (Rade Serbedzija), a generous amount of money to rent a costume, and while searching, Milich catches his teenage daughter (Leelee Sobieski) with two Japanese men and expresses outrage at their lack of sense of decency, and threatens to call the police.

Bill then takes a taxi out to a country mansion where a quasi-religious sexual ritual is taking place. One woman takes Bill aside and warns him he does not belong there, insisting 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 Bill "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. Bill is ushered from the mansion and warned 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 she had sex with the naval officer and many other men, while laughing at the idea of Bill seeing her with them.

Next morning Bill goes to Nick's hotel, and the desk clerk (Alan Cumming) tells Bill that a bruised and frightened Nick checked out a few hours earlier after returning with two large, dangerous-looking men. Nick tried to pass an envelope to him when they were leaving, but it was intercepted, then Nick was driven away by the two men.

Bill goes to return the costume - but not the mask, which Bill has misplaced - and Milich, 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 returns to the mansion in his own car and is greeted at the gate by a man with a note warning him to cease and desist his inquiries. At home, Bill thinks about Alice's dream 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 a well-dressed man is following him. After losing him, Bill reads a newspaper story about a beauty queen who had died of a drug overdose, whom Bill recognizes as Mandy. After Bill examies Mandy's body at the morgue, 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 asks about the death of Mandy, whom Ziegler has identified as the woman at the party who'd "sacrificed" herself to prevent Bill's punishment, and about Nick. Ziegler insists that Nick is safely back at 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 has died from another accidental drug overdose. Bill does not know if Ziegler is telling him the truth, but says nothing further.

When Bill returns home, he sees the rented mask 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, "fuck" as soon as possible.