"Dream Story" and EYES WIDE SHUT's (Teen) Ladies of the Night

The Young Lady (14-Year-Old Leelee Sobieski)
and Dr. Harford (Tom Cruise)

In Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Dr. Harford (Tom Cruise) went to the Rainbow costume boutique to purchase a cloak and mask to attend a masquerade (i.e., orgy). While perusing the racks, Milich, the boutique’s owner, discovered his young daughter (14-year-old Leelee Sobieski) in her bra and panties as she was involved in an age-gap three-way with two middle-aged Japanese men.

After Milich, understandably yet violently, confronted the Japanese men, Milich learned that the “young lady” (i.e., his “child”) invited the men to the age-gap three-way.

Japanese man, "Are you crazy? We were invited here by the young lady."

Milich replied, "Young lady. This is my daughter. Couldn't you see she's a child?"

Milich wasn’t naive; thus, he didn’t put the blame solely on the men, because he surmised that his daughter was to blame as well. Consequently, Milich attempted to corporally punish her, and he called her a “little whore” before she escaped to sensuously embrace Dr. Harford from behind for protection.

However, after Dr. Harford returned to the Rainbow, he observed Milich’s child exit the back room of the boutique with the two Japanese men in tow, which was following their apparent (off-screen) three-way. After the child lovingly embraced her father, he formally introduced her, still in her bra and panties, to Dr. Harford; thereby, revealing to filmgoers that Milich had come to condone his daughter’s salacious behavior.

Per the "Eyes Wide Shut, Part 1 (Erotic 90's, Part 20)" episode of the You Must Remember This podcast, Sobieski was 14-years-old when her Eyes Wide Shut scenes were filmed, but she was 16 when the film was released, which is when she appeared on the August 1999 cover of Details magazine with the leading lead article line: “READY OR NOT: LEELEE SOBIESKI GROWS UP FAST IN EYES WIDE SHUT”

Eyes Wide Shut is based on Arthur Schnitzler’s novella Dream Story. In the novella, Dr. Harford is Dr. Fridolin, Milich is Gibiser, and Milich’s daughter is a “little Pierrette” who was described as a "graceful little girl," a "young and charming girl, still almost a child”.

In the novella’s costume rental shop, Mr. Gibiser discovered his little Pierrette with “two judges in red robes”. Consequently, she disappeared, but she soon reappeared after “slithering out from under the table” in a “pair of white silk stockings”, and ran lovingly into the arms of Dr. Fridolin with her face powdered, her breasts scented, and her eyes filled with desire. Schnitzler wrote:

The little one pressed herself against Fridolin as if he had to protect her. Her small narrow face was white-powered, covered with some beauty spots, from her tender breasts rose a scent of roses and powder; her eyes smiled mischief and desire.

She looked up at him enticingly and childlike, as if spellbound.

Understandably, Mr. Gibiser threatened to call the police on the two judges in red, but the judges informed Mr. Gibiser that his little Pierrette initiated the age-gap affair.

“Gentlemen,” called Gibiser, “you will stay here until I hand you over to the police.”

“What are you thinking?” cried both. And as if from one mouth: “We followed an invitation from the young lady.”

Consequently, Gibiser called his daughter a “depraved creature” and sent her, “white and delicate”, off to bed.

However, by the next day, readers learned that Gibiser came to condone his daughter’s depraved behavior, because after one of the judges exited the little Pierrette’s bedroom, lit a (post sex) cigarette, and bid Gibiser adieu, Gibiser informed Dr. Harford that he and the judge had “come to an agreement by other means” (i.e., a financial agreement). Schnitzler wrote:

At that moment, the door leading to the inner rooms opened, and a young man in an open overcoat over his evening dress stepped out. Fridolin knew immediately that it could be none other than one of the judges from last night. No doubt, he came from Pierrette’s room.

He seemed taken aback when he caught sight of Fridolin, but quickly composed himself. He greeted Gibiser fleetingly with a wave of his hand, then lit a cigarette using a lighter on the office desk, and left the apartment.

After Dr. Fridolin left the costume shop, “with a feeling of annoyance that seemed disproportionate even to him”, he went to the polyclinic, where a young patient smiled at him, and she happened to be the same girl who had pressed her young breasts against his cheek. Schnitzler wrote:

The young girl with the suspicious apical catarrh in the last bed smiled at him. It was the same one who had recently pressed her breasts so trustingly against his cheek during an examination.

(Note: Dr. Fridolin may have referred to the young patient's “apical catarrh” as suspicious, because it could have developed due to sexual activity.)

Earlier in the novella, Dr. Fridolin and Albertine, Dr. Fridolin’s wife, who was “barely seventeen” when they got engaged, shared past attractions that they had developed while on a family trip to Denmark. Dr. Fridolin shared with his wife that at the beach, he became attracted to a “young girl, perhaps fifteen years old, with loose blonde hair flowing over her shoulders and down one side of her delicate breast.”

After the beautiful beachgoer caught sight of Dr. Fridolin, “she smiled, smiled wonderfully” with a “greeting, even a wave in her eyes”. In response to Dr. Fridolin’s gaze upon her, she "stretched her young slender body high” and she became “sweetly excited by the radiance” of his gaze. The beautiful girl’s gaze upon Dr. Fridolin caused him to feel a “movement, surpassing anything” that he had ever felt. So much so, that he “felt close to fainting." However, the young beachgoer and Dr. Fridolin did not commence an age-gap affair.

Lastly, in terms of young prostitutes and\or age-gap affairs in the novella, one night in Buchfeldgasse, Dr. Fridolin: “found himself on a narrow street where only a few suspicious-looking [young] women wandered about, making sad attempts to attract customers,” where he was stopped by 17-year-old Mizzi, a “young and pretty [sex worker], with a pale face and naturally red lips.”

“Won’t you come with me, doctor?” Mizzi asked.

“Come on,” she said when he hesitated.

After the doctor entered the young prostitute’s room, where an “oil lamp burned”, she “smiled and approached Fridolin”, “she undressed unhurriedly”, and she “sought his lips with hers.” However, Dr. Fridolin said, “I am really tired [...] You have such a sweet, gentle voice. Just talk, tell me something.” Mizzi rebutted, “You’re just afraid” And she exclaimed, “What a pity!”

Ultimately, 35-year-old Dr. Fridolin regretted that he didn’t cheat on his wife with, among other (young) women, the little Pierrette and the teen prostitute. Schnitzler wrote:

Only then did he think of Albertine - but as if he had to win her over again too. He felt he couldn't be with her again until he had cheated on her with all the others from tonight: the naked woman, Pierrette, Marianne, and the girl from the narrow alley.

Consequently, Dr. Fridolin went back to Mizzi’s apartment, but he was informed by “another young, not unattractive woman, [who] was wrapped in a bathrobe” that Mizzi, whom he described as “the most graceful, yes, even the purest of all”, was in the hospital. Then the young woman shared with the doctor, “But we’re healthy, thank God,” and she “came very close to Fridolin with half-open lips and a cheeky throwing back of her voluptuous body, so the bathrobe opened.”

Unsurprisingly, Eyes Wide Shut was nominated for a César Award for Best Foreign Film, and Schnitzler’s novella, which was first published in 1926, has been adapted and translated from German a number of times over the years.