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Enemies: a Love story

6.1

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Original title

Enemies: a Love story

Year

1989

Running time

120 min.

Country

United States

Director

Paul Mazursky

Screenwriter

Roger L. Simon, Paul Mazursky. Novel: Isaac Bashevis Singer

Cast

Music

Maurice Jarre

Cinematography

Fred Murphy

Producer

Morgan Creek Productions. Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Genre

Comedy. Drama. Romance | 1940s

Synopsis

A post-Holocaust Jew, living in Coney Island, can't choose between three women--his current wife (who hid him during the war), his tempestuous lover, and his reappearing pre-war wife he presumed dead.

This dark comedy, adapted from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel (Singer was the writer of Yentl's story), charts the exploits of four Holocaust survivors in 1940s New York. Herman, a Polish refugee who was hidden from the Nazis in a hayloft, has married his former servant and savior Yadwiga. But Herman has more than one secret life: his neurotic mistress Masha has become his lover, and his first wife, Tamara (Anjelica Huston), thought dead, has unexpectedly reappeared in New York. As the film progresses, Herman becomes hilariously ensnared by his own web of falsehoods and half-truths in what is one of Paul Mazurky’s most accomplished and impressive films.

Awards: 1989: 3 Nominations for Oscar: Adapted Screenplay, actrices secundarias (Huston & Olin)

1989: New York Film Critics Circle: Best Director & Best Supp. Actress (Olin). 3 Nom.

1989: Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Nominated for Best Supp. Actress (Huston)

1989: National Society of Film Critics (NSFC): Best Supporting Actress. 4 nominations

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Critics' reviews

"This is a stunning film, richly detailed and brilliantly acted. (...) Mazursky has rendered the struggle of these refugees from hell with a cleareyed compassion that cuts straight to the heart."

Peter Travers: Rolling Stone
"The director, Paul Mazursky, has gathered a superbly balanced cast and kept the action so smooth that the viewer is carried along on a tide of mystical slyness."

Pauline Kael: The New Yorker
"Loosely constructed and at times enigmatic, but rich in characterization, texture, mood, tone and meaning."

Newsday
"For all his sincerity, Mazursky has ironed out Singer's wicked delight in the ambiguities and frailties of the human psyche, and turned the story into mere burlesque."

Ella Taylor: LA Weekly
"Clearly it's the best of Mazursky's career. But it's something more, the brilliant dovetailing of a writer's intentions and a film maker's mature craft."

Sheila Benson: Los Angeles Times
"Mazursky and his co-writer, Roger Simon, have done a difficult adaptation job well, concentrating disparate elements of humour, sex and despair into a tragicomedy of unusual depth."

Angie Errigo: Empire

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User history

Enemies: a Love story

1989

Paul Mazursky

6.1

(277)