A married couple goes to a Christmas party where the husband named Bill (Tom Cruise) meets his old friend Nick whom he has not seen for eight or ten years. Nick plays piano during the party and since he is busy he invites Bill to see him some day in a café where he is a customer. Then Bill (he is a doctor) is suddenly summoned to see a sick girl who gave herself a heroin shot. Meanwhile his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) is flirting with a man who is trying to seduce her. This is rather intriguing already but this is only the beginning.

Things become more interesting. At home after the party Bill and Alice have a depressing talk. The young doctor wanders the streets of New York. Perhaps that is the way he likes to rest or he is just fond of walking. But in the street he encounters a hooker who manages to pull him into her house. It's shabby little place. The doctor seems not to resist the circumstances one cannot say that he really wants to spend a night with a prostitute but he is reluctant to refuse her offer. But a sudden telephone call from his wife relieves the situation and he leaves.

Bill is wandering the streets of New York. By accident he passes that café which Nick often visits. He enters and soon Nick joins him. He tells Bill about his job and what he tells raises Bill's curiosity. He plays with a bandage on his eyes but once he was able to see really amazing things. How interesting. But when Nick answers a phone call and writes a word “Fidelio” it strikes Bill completely. What is “Fidelio”? Sounds like a name of the opera. A password! Where? To what place? He entreats Nick to give him an address of that mysterious place but Nick warns him that he will be allowed there only in cape with hood and a mask. No problem.

So young doctor goes to the shop and with a help of money easily gets a proper outfit for that party. Then he takes a taxi and comes to the place. He tells the password to the guard one time and, being asked in the house for the password again gives the same one.

In the huge hall where he enters wrapped in the cape like a monk he beholds a kind of ritual performance (that revives in your mind the scenes from Steven Speilberg). Naked women stand in the circle and men all wrapped in the cape and disguised by masks watch this performance. But unexpectedly, one of the masked figures greets him. And later when the ritual is finished he is chosen by one of the women and she warns him about the imminent danger. He should leave while it is not too late. But of course our hero ignores all the warnings.

Soon they discover the stranger and he is called to a kind of trial but is unexpectedly rescued by the woman who warned him. But he has to leave after that and never learns what happens after…

He returns home late at night but before that he returns his costume—everything except the mask—he has lost it somewhere. At home his wife tells him a strange dream. But the next day Bill is still interested in what had happened the night before. He should investigate this mysterious event. And partly it is because he is worried about what happened to Nick. He decides to find him but fails. He learns that Nick left early in the morning and that's all. Later a stranger thing happens. In a newspaper he finds an article with a picture about a girl who died from an overdose and by some inner sense he realizes that it was the girl from the night party.

But then he suddenly receives a call from his friend Victor, a host from the first party where Bill has been with Alice. Victor wants to talk to him. It happened that he has been there and saw everything. But the only thing he can tell Bill is that the entire thing was fake and that the girl really died from an overdose and was not killed. Depressed, Bill returns home late at night and tells everything to his wife. They are together again. They love each other.

So this intriguing plot masterfully reveals the search for unusual, something to get away from stale reality. Some people find it in their dreams, others in the real events. The wanderings of the main character reminds me in a way of some adventure without any special purpose or meaning: you learn about something and then decide to use your knowledge and you don't even know why because actually you don't need it. I think the lust for mystery lies deeply in man's soul and he must investigate this mystery but it always escapes him. It's especially obvious in the fact that Bill was quickly found as a stranger who actually didn't belong to that circle. But what it was all about he had never found.

This film is really outstanding and stays much above the usual standard. It is interesting, and Tom Cruise's acting is really brilliant. It affects the imagination and not every film succeeds to do that.

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