Theme

you are very brave to ask the question as the "Kubrick Fan Club" says you are not allowed to.

KFC puts Stan up on a pedestal and prays to him and finds all manner of wondrous things in his movies that Stan himself never intended.

basically Stan was a very down to earth person who FLED the American Beauty in order to be able to observe it from afar and do "social comment" ON it.

in this movie he went a bit too far [via scenes deleted] and got bumped off for daring to expose the BIG P [and that is the REAL P and not the one you are TOLD is P via the Lolita Redux character]

so he grabs a book called DreamStory and very loosely uses it as a vehicle to tell his story. He uses a married couple scenario to produce "revenge", to GET Tom to the ultimate orgy of the Untouchables which was his point of the movie, but NOT for consenting adults as seen in movie.

we will never know the content of the scenes deleted but can simply assume there were "more things to see" when Tom was "looking around".

it ends with the loving couple as you say f|cking their way back to joy.

that is the basic structure but there are lots of Stanlyisms on the way as there always are.

I would need more posts to explain