Enemigos: Una Historia de Amor

Very little in the previous career of director Paul Mazursky gave any hint of the depth and complexity of this comedy drama, adapted from an Isaac Bashevis Singer story about the misadventures of a Jewish refugee (Ron Silver) in New York City shortly after World War Two. Silver has a few problems most men wouldn't mind sharing, including a wife who is more a devoted servant and a mistress as passionate as she is temperamental, but the cozy arrangement is complicated by the unexpected return of his first wife, long thought dead, to act as a ghostly conscience and councilor for her bewildered husband. The film is so well made, with such attention to period flavor and detail, that it seems mean to point out its few nagging shortcomings: the haphazard structure, with too many sudden, incompatible changes in mood, and the equally inconsistent characters (it's never made clear, for example, why all three women are so devoted to this particular nobody). Too bad some of the effort that went into the production didn't first go into the script, but it's still an unusually rich experience, with an added dimension of depth from the specters of the Holocaust still haunting each character.

It's move over darling, with some extra twists. It's the ol "dead wife returns" story. A period piece, taking place in 1949. Ron silver is herman, the jewish writer, who has a very complicated life. A new wife, and a mistress too! It's a little bit brighton beach memoirs, or maybe radio days, with a side of tune in tomorrow. We can see how its all going to blow up in herman's face, at some point. Who has the emotional energy for all this?.. much less the financial means?? The women are all big emotional messes, so it's sometimes hard to watch... who would put up with all that?? But it's just the right amount tongue in cheek, so it all works! Lots of jewish culture thrown in. I do recommend this one. Even though herman is cheating with everyone all around, we're still rooting for the underdog. Very well done! The book must have been really well written. Novel by isaac singer. Directed by paul mazursky... was nominated for five oscars! One was for enemies.

Singer is a downer (except for the cinematically changed ending of Yentl), and this extremely well-performed and well-directed sado-masochistic tale is no exception. This film truly makes you feel its characters' abundant and excruciating pains. The Holocaust was Hell, and this film convinces me that the only thing worse than getting killed in a concentration camp, is surviving one.

I once read about how Paul Mazursky's career as a director has gravitated between very well done ("Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice", "Moscow on the Hudson") and what-was-he-thinking?! ("Scenes from a Mall", "The Flying Pickle"). Well, I can say with certainty that "Enemies: A Love Story" is one of his good ones. Portraying Holocaust survivor Herman Broder (Ron Silver) living in New York in 1949 and suddenly surrounded by three women (his current wife, another married woman, and his first wife whom he believed to be dead), the movie presents an eye-opening situation. It's like a slice-of-life story taken one step further. As the three women, Margaret Sophie Stein, Lena Olin, and Anjelica Huston do a very good job. Definitely worth seeing.

Paul Mazursky's best film but then he was working with great material, in this case Issac Bashevis Singer's novel about a Holocaust survivor who, having moved to America after the war, finds himself with three living wives; he's a bigamist more by design than choice, believing his first wife died in the concentration camps, he remarried in America, (now wife number three is a whole different story).

This is a great tragi-comedy; the situation is farcial and sometimes very funny but the horror of the Holocaust permeates every frame and Mazursky treats the material with the respect it is due. This is a movie that comes close to perfection from the superb period design down to the faultless performances of the entire cast.

Ron Silver is superb as Herman, a man confident enough to try to balance three relationships at once, convincing himself he loves all the women in his life, Angleica Huston, the wife who returns from the dead, Margaret Sophie Stein as the simple servant girl he marries after the war and Lena Olin as the clinging beauty who emotionally blackmails him into marriage. Herman is a liar and a cheat and a shyster but Silver makes him hugely sympathetic, an amoral man who, nevertheless, wants to do right by everyone but who is constantly doomed to failure. This is a great movie that deserves to be better known.