On the second day of Christmas I got from Eyes Wide Shut…

Two deceptions and confessions

This is the second post of my festive series on Eyes Wide Shut, running through December. You can read the previous post here in which we flirted with formalism, Kubrick’s critics, and the paired temptations of Bill and Alice Harford at the Zieglers’ Christmas party. Today we head into the bathroom and bedroom for a peek at the secrets those places are privy to, pun I suppose intended.

Ziegler, semi-nude — black braces over grey chest-hair — sneaks Dr. Harford into a bathroom to aid another beautiful young woman, sprawled nude and O.D.’d. After Bill’s confirmed the woman, Mandy, is not in mortal danger, Ziegler asks him to keep the close call a secret. Bill does so, even from his wife (for now). The next night Alice squeezes her face in a vanity mirror, sighing, then takes out from behind her reflection a drug stash;[1] she then proceeds to roll the most weed-heavy joint this side of the Camberwell Carrot. With her and Bill suitably stoned she quizzes him about his absence at the Zieglers’, wondering whether he wasn’t fucking the fashion models.

Bill denies this and claims he was helping Ziegler who “wasn’t feeling too well.” Seeing as Ziegler could’ve been caught in flagrante with “an overdosed hooker” by his wife or other guests, chances are…