AWARDS
BEST DIRECTOR New York Film Critics Circle (1990)
NOMINATION Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best
Screen Adaptation; Academy Awards (1990)
Based on
the brilliant, enigmatic novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, this is a quietly
haunting film about an aloof Jewish intellectual (Ron Silver) who managed
to hide from the Nazis during WWII and now, in 1949, leads a double life
in Coney Island, NY. He's married to his wartime (non-Jewish) protector
(Margaret Sophie Stein) and fooling around with a sexy married Jewish
woman (Lena Olin). Things get even more complicated when his first wife
(Angelica Houston), thought dead in the Holocaust, returns.
CRITICAL
ACCLAIM
Enemies,
a Love Story is such an intriguing film because it refuses
to be tamed, to settle down into a nice, comforting parable with a lesson
to teach us. It is about the tumult of the heart, and Mazursky tells its
story without compromise. There is no key to tell us how to feel. No easy
laughs as Herman races from one woman to another, but no cheap pathos,
either, at their fates. Indeed, this is not even a movie about how the
women are victimized; each one receives more or less what her fate has
dictated for her, and Herman, who suffers so grievously, is punished mostly
by his own knowledge of what a rat he is.
- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
ALSO
DIRECTED BY PAUL MAZURSKY
Yippee:
A Journey to Jewish Joy
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