Anjelica Huston, Enemies, a Love Story

Friday, April 08, 2005

Pauline Kael

“….Singer constructed a post-Holocaust sex farce with three passionately jealous women in love with a stealthy, guilt-ridden man. It's about refugees who are lost, who go on living in New York and chasing each other into bed after they've vanished from their lives. The director, Paul Mazursky, has gathered a superbly balanced cast and has kept the action so smooth that the viewer is carried along on a tide of mystical slyness. It's overwhelming.

“…. It's a situation out of a classic boudoir farce, but Herman and his three wives--Tamara, the witchlike, seductive mother figure, with black-dyed hair; Yadwiga…; Masha…--are not the characters we're accustomed to seeing in Frenchy bedrooms….

“Anjelica Huston's Tamara feels dead because her children are dead (though they return in her dreams and that invigorates her); she's a strong, capable woman, with an erotic aura, an accented, Garboesque voice, and knowing, side-long glances…. The characters go in circles, getting themselves into sex in order to forget other things and then waking up back where they were. Mazursky pulls the rug out from under us, and we drop through the farce.”

Pauline Kael
New Yorker, date ?
Movie Love, pp. 229-232

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