Eyes Wide Shut evokes the crisis that a New York couple is going through when the wife, Alice, reveals to her husband, Bill, her haunting sexual fantasies involving a stranger. Discovering an erotic imaginative universe that eludes him, Bill is haunted by images of his wife giving herself to the stranger. Over the course of several nights of wandering, going to have experiences that put him face to face with his own fantasies and his true identity.
In the film's central scene, masked and wearing a cape, Bill slips into a secret party and, amongst masked participants, witnesses an orgiastic ritual directed by a master of ceremonies (he, too, masked and dressed in crimson like a cardinal).
There is a great diversity in the guests' masks: most of them evoke the Venetian Carnival, but we also see African masks, a face in Cubist style, grotesque faces, masks of animals and mythological figures in an allegory of mankind mixing basic instincts and spirituality.
Bill's mask seems strangely inexpressive: beneath the elaborate gilt ornamentation appear clenched, porcelain-grey jaws; only his eyes give it life. But curiously, rather than concealing his imposture, the mask accuses him: Bill is recognised. After asking him to remove his mask, the "officiating priests" of the secret ceremony order him to take off his clothes in the centre of the ceremonial circle.
In the last movement of the film, Bill, who has somehow mislaid his mask, is horrified to discover it on his pillow, next to his sleeping wife. He cannot get rid of this mask, having become a death mask and visible sign of his having lost his way.
In Eyes Wide Shut, the face is a mask, the individual hiding behind a social function. Bill is continually seen disguised: in formal wear or in his doctor's white coat. During the secret soirée, the colourful mask, like a cinema screen, reveals his true identity, made up of unappeased desires.