Who payed the critics

ridiculous rating

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

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.

Filmmaker Paul Mazursky obviously lavished a lot of love on "Enemies: A Love Story", but the material's thin design shows through, that and a curiously limited budget which gives the nostalgic trimmings a misplaced, artificial appearance. Pretentious drama adapted from Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel takes place in New York 1949, with Holocaust survivor Ron Silver involved with three different women: his second wife, his mistress, and his first wife long thought deceased. Solid acting by Silver and Lena Olin, superb work by Anjelica Huston nearly keeps this stilted formula afloat, but the period flavor was too elaborate a feat for low-budget Mazursky to capture, and the finale is sadly ineffective. ** from ****

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.

I bought this movie (DVD release) after looking for other films by Paul Mazursky after being enchanted by An Unmarried Woman (and finding out there's reportedly a DVD release for that on January 10th) and after reading xavrush89's comments.I didn't know what to expect going into this movie, I usually try to find out enough to get interested but not enough to know what's going on. It worked, in this case.Ron Silver plays a Polish Jew living in Coney Island after the Holocaust. It is 4 years after the end of WWII and he works as a writer and has a wife whom he wed because she protected him from the Nazis. Meanwhile, he's enjoying the company of another woman during 'business trips' when he finds out personally that his original wife thought to have been killed by Nazis is alive and in New York!! It sounds so absurd that you might think this movie is a comedy, but it's not. There are funny moments, but throughout this movie you will become wrapped up in the very serious moral dilemma of a man married to two women while he's in love with another and the conflicting emotions that all of the characters feel and experience.The acting is top notch and every character is played by each respective actor remarkably. Everything they say and do is believable and realistic. Not to mention the excellent environments, although things look a little shiny and new.One of my complaints involves the audio levels. At times it is extremely difficult to hear what the characters are saying, much less understand them with their (excellent) accents. There's dialogue that passed me by even after going back to listen to it twice at times.Another complaint is the video restoration isn't all that great, but it keeps that '1989 look' and it's better than the ultra-crisp visuals of movies today.But I don't have much to complain about as far as the actual movie goes, and that's a good thing. Entirely fascinating and skillfully produced and directed, it's one of those movies that was extremely interesting but hard to enjoy due to the nature of the struggles of the characters. Nonetheless it's a great film that you should see at least once.