Once upon a time, I was about to enter my senior year of high school. I went to see Stanley Kubrick’s final movie. I marveled at, and felt proud of, my ability to suppress prurient thoughts despite Nicole Kidman’s bare ass and see-through chemise and bathed-blue fuck scenes—not to mention the orgy scenes.
It was only later, a while later, that I realized why: if you were just getting, um, excited looking at those things, you weren’t seeing the movie; you were just seeing those things. And, though the film shows us those things, Kubrick doesn’t want you to want to see those things. Or, he doesn’t want you to want to see those things.
All that said, Nicole Kidman is smoking in this movie.