[.ca] Sleeping With the Enemy

From Amazon.com:
This 1991 thriller by Joseph Ruben (True Believer) works up to a point: Julia Roberts plays an abused wife who fakes her death and starts anew under a different identity in Iowa. Her psychopathic husband (Patrick Bergin) figures it out and stalks her and her new boyfriend (Kevin Anderson). The best part of the film is the moody isolation of Roberts's life with Bergin. Ruben ingeniously stakes out the story by presenting what looks like an ideal life between the two--a nice house on the ocean, a seemingly healthy sex life, etc.--and then, whammo! Vital to the plot but less interesting is everything afterward, but that's less an inherent script problem than it is obvious studio pressure to push Roberts as a cute star. There's even a sequence where the actress tries on a series of hats while Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" plays on the soundtrack. Such insistent valentines to Roberts destroys most of Ruben's momentum and the film's credibility, and the project never quite recovers. --Tom Keogh

very good thriller, few flaws:
I found this movie rather excellent in the thriller/suspense area. A quite plausible situation is the basis of the script: an abused woman (Julia Roberts) fakes her death, and moves to Iowa assuming a different identity. Her psychopathic husband (Patrick Bergin) figures it out soon enough, finds her, and stalks her and the new boyfriend (Kevin Anderson). What is interesting is really the beginning of the film which shows the moody isolation of the abused woman's life with her husband. The glass house on the ocean is beautiful. I do agree with jasoncarulli that this is *not* Roberts' best performance (does she even have one? I never was a fan of her acting!) Flaws? There are a few, especially towards the ending, but the only one that comes to mind at the moment, is when she flushes the ring down the toilet, early into the movie. THAT was a very stupid move, BUT if it hadn't been done... there wouldn't be a movie! Still a good enjoyable movie - for its story.

so so movie made better by lead performances:
i guess this movie is OK.both Julia Roberts and Patrick Bergen are good in their respective roles, but the movie itself is lacking any real intensity and even though the wife is in danger,i just never really felt her jeopardy.in fact i found the movie boring and slow.i think that had more to do with the writing than the acting.this movie is standard for this genre,not that great,but there are worse.the performances of the two leads are enough to elevate the movie. my vote for Sleeping with the Enemy: 3/5.

One major blooper...:
Unless she knew that her husband was going to force her to go on a boat or that she set up something with the guy who owned the boat why would she be taking swimming lessons? I liked the movie, glad I rented it - but wouldn't own it.

Husband From Hell!:
Julia Roberts plays a battered wife who is reaching her breaking point with her obsessive, controlling , and abusive husband. So she fakes her death during a storm on a sail boat and runs away. She changes her identity and settles down in a small, peaceful town. Trying to forget about her husband and her past, she starts dating her neighbor and begins enjoying her new life of freedom! But little does she know that her psychotic husband is hot on her trail. And is ready to get serious revenge on her. But little does he know that things can always backfire. And a person can only be pushed so far before they give you a taste of your own medacine. Full of action- packed thrills and super suspense! A classic along the lines of "Enough", "Dolores Claiborne" and "Fatal Attraction"!

Flawed, But Engrossing:
Although primarily a showcase for Julia Roberts, who had become Hollywood's latest "IT" girl after "Pretty Woman", this romantic thriller, based on Nancy Price's novel, is watchable and quite suspenseful. It cannot be denied that the book is far superior, as is the case with most film adaptations based on a best-selling novel. The film is obviously aimed at women and the "yuppie" attitude that was still prevalent in the early 1990s. In the book, the abusive husband and wife were middle-class, while in the film Martin Burney (Patrick Bergen) is a wealthy businessman, who places his beautiful wife on a shelf like a trophy, expecting perfection and exploding when she doesn't meet his qualifications. While many may argue the change in their financial status in the movie, it does show that domestic violence can happen at every economic level, in all different walks of life and societies. We are only subjected to one instance where Laura (Roberts) is beaten by her spouse, although his control over her, demands and insensitivity to her feelings has been hinted at, and she does indicate that it was definitely not the first time. The novel goes into far more graphic detail of his offenses. Sara (the names that Roberts assumes are reversed in the book) wears a wig constantly after she escapes to Iowa, while the movie only has Laura wearing a wig as she escapes, and then she has her hair trimmed a little shorter and gets a perm. Not a very effective disguise if you're trying to alter your physical appearance so the bad guy won't recognize you! When she tosses her wedding ring in the toilet and tries unsuccessful to flush it down the drain, Martin finds it after he tears through Laura's personal belongings and cuts himself, he discovers it with no problem - did he not use the toilet in the weeks since Laura's "death"? Faking her demise, since her husband believes that she could not swim (she secretly took lessons at the YWCA, who inadvertently tips psycho hubby off - how did they find him?), she finds an ideal guy, Ben Woodward (Kevin Anderson), the local college drama professor, who embodies the sensitive, artistic dreamboat with such naturalness that you cannot help but like him. He gets her to open up (at least as far as she is capable of doing) and he senses that she is very traumatized, and is there for her when she most needs him. Anderson has rarely been seen since and I wonder what became of him - he certainly had the talent (anyone who can even partially pull off the opening number from "West Side Story" with a garden hose in tow and make it look easy must have something special), and the sequences featuring Van Morrison's Brown-Eyed Girl, and the vintage 60s tune Runaround Sue is actually quite engaging, a break from the intensity of the plot and showing some light-hearted, romantic fun. Bergin is effective if somewhat hammy in some parts - his character, no doubt, had some kind of undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder, but at times he's a little too wild-eyed, but he does have the charm masking brutality bit down quite good, as many violent offenders are skilled at presenting as a front (how can such a charming, wealthy man be such a monster in private?). Bergin, a latecomer to acting (he was a teacher for children with learning disabilities in his native Ireland), has played may villainous roles, although here it was obvious that the filmmakers were trying to get him to resemble a certain dictator (guess who!). And the fact that he seems to be able to slip in and out of her home (and rearrange her towels and condiments) without her knowing is definitely stretching it, something that Robert De Niro's character in the 1991 remake of "Cape Fear" also seemed to excel at, and Martin seems to have it too easy when tracking down his frail mother-in-law in the nursing home that Laura secretly placed her in after lying to Martin about her mother's fictional passing. Laura is a terrified woman driven to desperation, who wants to start a new life but she is still living in fear of the man she married, who she fears (and rightly so) will stop at nothing to find her if he discovers that she has escaped him. It's nauseating when he calls her his "princess", which again, seems to indicate that she is more of a possession to him, and I wasn't particularly interested in seeing Martin's backside after he ravishes her to Berlioz's "Symphonie Le Fantasique". The cinematography is breathtaking. The final showdown, terrifying and voyeuristic (the viewer, of course, is aware of the danger lurking in the shadows far before Laura and Ben are), and it's last resort for this young woman who found that the law could not protect her. Of course, the brief, the bad guy comes back from death momentarily part is ridiculous and clichéd, but when Laura embraces the injured be and the camera pulls back, showing the dead Martin, eyes open, his blood streaked hand, with Laura's gold wedding band just a few inches way, sparkling, is very compelling. The music, by Jerry Goldsmith is great, conveying sadness, terror and romance in equal amounts. Read the book, watch the film, and draw your own conclusions.