SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY
[Minor Spoilers]
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY stars Julia Roberts as an abused wife who runs away to start a new life. Although I always enjoy Roberts' presence on the screen, I have to say that this is far from being her best film. Roberts, herself, turns in an energetic performance, but I failed to detect any depth in her characterization of a potentially interesting and complex woman. Neither did I detect anything in the story that added anything to my understanding of, or gave me an insight into, spousal abuse.
In short, this was a TV movie with a superior budget.
(Roberts' best film, IMHO, if you want to know, was MYSTIC PIZZA; everything that I can recall at this moment since then, including STEEL MAGNOLIAS, has been tainted with melodrama. FLATLINERS is probably a reasonable contender for her second most interesting role.)
Melodrama and a lack of originality are the problems with SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY. Certainly the actors are attractive and competent. Patrick Bergin, who plays the husband, gives the most interesting performance of the three principals, but then the devil does always get the best lines. The actor who plays the new boyfriend suffers, perhaps, from being too much a cute teddy bear and a too perfect would-be lover; a trifle less understanding, forbearance, and patience might have added some depth to his character. Perfection is not good drama, how ever much we might desire it in real life.
In other words, once again the writer falls back on symmetry: the bad husband, the good boyfriend, the hapless but not helpless woman in between. Symmetry gives control and predictability to a design, a certain formal elegance. But some little touch of asymmetry adds interest and texture.
The story is only slightly interesting in places and too predictable throughout. And the ending, which recapitulates one of the movies' weakest and cheapest "surprise" endings, is a major let-down. It was a pretty good schtick thirty years ago for Simone Signoret in DIABOLIQUE; it was campy fun in CARRIE; it was the crowning touch of sleaziness in the very sleazy FATAL ATTRACTION. And here it is inevitable.
I can recommend SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY to two groups only: devoted fans of Julia Roberts and people who have to see everything, despite their own instincts and others' warnings.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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