note: all star ratings have to do with whether I think the story told is a realistic portrayal. In fact, all reviews are about covering issues related to abuse, scapegoating, toxic family portrayal, alcoholic family portrayal, substance abuse family portrayal, children from abusive families and their experiences, and how effective that portrayal is, not about how effective the movie-making is, or the set design, or production, directing and acting. I leave those concerns to other writers and reviewers. I don't even cover whether I would recommend the movie to others based on my likes and dislikes; I only recommend movies that I think will open people's eyes as to how survivors of abuse live in the world.
This page contains a review for:
Sleeping With the Enemy
Sleeping With the Enemy
(spoiler alert)
When I decided I would do a movie review about "Sleeping With the Enemy", my first thought was "Here we go! Another thriller movie about abuse!" - as if abuse topics need to be a thriller to be considered for a big box movie.
And before seeing it, I knew it had been panned by critics. I had seen those reviews before I had seen the movie.
Normally, I don't take critics seriously with movies about abuse because I don't think many of them understand much beyond the entertainment value for them. However, like Mommie Dearest which was also panned by critics, it was a huge box office hit, grossing 175 million dollars on a 19 million dollar budget.
This says, to me, that a lot of people can relate to it, and in many ways it was a "first of its kind" in terms of a Hollywood film showing a battered women who is emotionally, physically and sexually abused by her husband.
Of course, some of the other reasons might have had to do with Julia Roberts, herself, who was on a professional wave of garnering huge audiences for her acting abilities. And her acting abilities are commendable in this film.
In fact, Roberts also starred in August Osage County, another movie I reviewed about an abusive family.
I think one of the reasons why Roberts is so good in roles having to do with abuse is because she has an ability to pull her emotions in (which is often what most abuse survivors do, and are expected to do) while portraying how she feels with body language. Even in Pretty Woman she gets grabbed, thrown around and hit by the character lawyer, Philip Stuckey.
Of all the actresses I have seen in films about abuse, she does one of the best jobs of looking like someone with PTSD.
She grew up in a very supportive loving non-abusive family, so it is remarkable that she can play these characters at all. It is what good acting is all about.
From my own experience, a high number of battered women have seen the movie and can relate to it. In fact, it is the first movie often recommended by battered women to people who want to know what women endure in relationships where physical abuse is present.
Anyway, I was more pleased with this movie than I thought I would be. It wasn't nearly "the slasher movie in disguise" that Roger Ebert saw. In fact, it was more realistic than many people are comfortable with, perhaps even Roger Ebert.
Too bad it was so panned because like other movies about abuse, it swept issues about abuse under the rug in an unforseen way, and once again in our society, and deemed the realism of the scenes in the movie as null and void in many ways. A movie that is panned by critics is going to effect the intelligent members of society in terms of where to put their minds and concerns.
So doing something about abuse would dampen in the over-all culture as well.
I will be talking about why certain scenes were panned, and what actually happens to real women in these situations.
PERFECTIONISM
Laura Burney (played by Julia Roberts) is expected to keep the towels "perfectly folded" and cans of food in exacting order as dictated and required by her husband, Martin. If she doesn't do as she is told, Martin lashes out at her.
Their summer beach house on Cape Cod is practically sterile and square looking which adds to the theme of "everything has to be in order". It hides the messy violence by the presentation of people who care about neatness and cleanliness above all, so would not spill blood on the floor.
Although not all abusers are anal retentive to this degree, some are, but some live in absolute filth and squalor too. It seems that extremes are fairly prevalent in this area when it comes to abusers.
The sterile neatness and an expensive summer home with banks of windows everywhere is perhaps chosen by Martin to insinuate, "We have nothing to hide here" and "she's lucky to have me and the money I make". The "type of house" seems much more evil, covert and Machiavellian considering what is going on inside the home. It sets up a situation where people won't suspect that her role is to keep her tyrant pleased.
Basically she is there to present an image, an image contrary to her being bullied and abused and then given flowers in typical fashion of the cycle of abuse.
The insistence on erroneous expectations of perfection (like cans of food in organized precision) is fairly common among abusers. In fact, it goes into all aspects of life, into everything she does usually. Most abusers try to control even the way their wife speaks to them and to others, how she presents herself, how she looks at others, what she wears, what she seemingly thoughtlessly left on the counter (the honey jar from the morning breakfast a half hour ago, for instance).
A lot of abusers also add insults when their sense of perfection is lacking attentiveness from their partner, and adhered to at all times. While a trophy wife (which she is) might take care of such matters, being a trophy is usually not a fulfilling life, even without the abuse. A trophy only shows that things are perfect on the surface, but marked with hard work and sometimes bruises underneath. Still even if the trophy wife takes care of perfection issues to make her abuser happy, much of the time it isn't good enough (narcissists are often "damned if you do, and damned if you don't" type people). So something like this is bound to happen: "What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you leave the honey jar out when you KNOW that it should be put away immediately after breakfast!? You did this just to make me upset! Don't tell me you are having a lapse of attention again, or a senior moment at age 27 years old! What's the matter with you and your mind? Are you stupid or something?"
A honey jar suddenly takes on huge importance and becomes a vehicle for gaslighting, derision, name calling, bullying, blackmail, and to get her to adhere to what he wants at all times.
It is common for wives to be totally micro-managed and their self esteem played with by husbands like this.
The problem for the tyrants is that most people do not like living like this, no matter how much money, neatness, designer clothes, company from the upper echelons of the society they receive in their homes, and make-up flowers there are after the beatings.
In fact, she is expected to be grateful for the flowers she receives after the beatings.
Even the sex he initiates is cold and un-empathetic. She has been reduced down to being a servant in every way, which is what most abusers require from their victims.
Laura lives in quiet, lonely misery, which is what happens in these situations too. While she is shown getting the towels messy and having a laugh to herself, she does not do it within eye sight of him. If you bring up how miserable you feel with your abuser, you are usually shut down, shouted at, lectured, and made to feel ungrateful and embarrassed for how you feel. So nothing is ever addressed, and each party makes plans: the abuser makes plans to keep the woman down and dominated at all times, and in this case, Laura makes plans to fawn her way through as the dutiful wife while planning a get-away.
All of this is extremely common, including the perpetrator expecting fawning from the victim, to make sure she is never out of role (roles are everything to abusers). Perfection is just a part of how well you play the role assigned to you. The more she fawns, the more secure he feels in his grandiosity, power and dominance, and in his ability to control all situations and all people, including the perceptions of his wife and others in their circle.
LAURA IS HIT OVER WHAT HER HUSBAND PERCEIVES
AS HER ATTRACTION TO ANOTHER MAN
Laura is accused of flirting with a new neighbor who owns a boat and is an attractive doctor, but Laura has never met him and only noticed him once outside her window. When her husband hits her hard in the face and she falls to the floor, she reacts, certainly, but not in a way that rebels against his accusations, the fact that he thinks he has a right to treat her that way, or even asking him to read into the situation that provoked the attack. She has given up with all of that. She is hurt certainly, but is also submissive and weary.
This is such a common experience for battered women.
Being slapped hard across the face is also common for women who abuse men and children too. It is one style of physical abuse that men and women abusers share. The difference is that men are stronger than women and can often hit so hard that a woman falls to the floor, creating more injuries.
Martin deciding that she is interested in or flirting with the doctor is called perspecticide (also sometimes referred to as invalidation too). It is common among abusers who have Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder. In the case of narcissists, it is practically a given that they will be using perspecticide in their close personal relationships. Since they insist on dominating both the narrative and their partner, they will also be telling their partner what their feelings and thoughts are, rarely without asking, whether true or not true, whether destructive or not, mostly assuming they can read minds. They don't believe their spouses tell the truth anyway because they, the batterer, doesn't tell the truth (projection is also a big aspect of abuse).
Most abusive men also experience jealousy on an elevated level (more elevated than the general population), and it can be so overwhelming that they want to destroy others.
Sometimes hitting is "an insurance policy" against the possibility of her being attracted to the doctor, or trying to prevent her from thinking that she can get away from him by sharing with the doctor the intimate details of her bruises (something doctors would normally be concerned about), or starting an affair.
Add in a mix of egotism and entitlement (the entitlement that others should be 100 percent loyal to them but not be loyal in return), rage that can turn to violence, then you have a pretty toxic marriage.
Going nuts over a handsome man moving in next door is part and parcel of the crazy-making atmosphere with an abusive husband in it.
SHE IS TOLD SHE WILL GO IN THE NEIGHBOR'S BOAT
EVEN THOUGH SHE HAS A FEAR OF WATER
A lot of batterers have personality disorders, particularly Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder and sometimes these personality disorders are mixed together into Malignant Narcissism. If a person has most of the characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but displays a consistent amount of sadism and schadenfreude, then they are likely to have both (i.e. Malignant Narcissism).
Batterers who exert this much control tend to have both. They want to appear on top of the world and to have fans who flatter them in social circles, without being detected that they are a batterer, and that they micro-manage their wives so that the wives don't say much of anything (a lot of battered women are taught to talk about their bruises in public as "I'm so clumsy!"), and continually honing his image to develop an entourage of admirers, which is what the narcissistic part of their personality is about, and the antisocial personality part of them will beat the wife in private without feeling remorse or guilt (and often feel elated), trying to convince her that she deserves it, and if the batterer gets caught, pretending they are the victim of their wife instead (the whole "She made me do it!" common defense).
Everything in the battered woman's life eventually comes down to: "How can I be safe?"
Some women feel safer in an abusive relationship than out of it. Running away is 500 times more risky than staying in terms of being permanently injured or killed - that is the statistic. Many abusers also become stalkers too. If they aren't stalkers, they will be indulging in smear campaigns and schadenfreude an awful lot, delighting in the downturn of a victim's luck, perhaps the victim's inability to attract a good mate, or keep a career going, trying to paint their victims as abusive unhinged crazy monsters, even in public sometimes. The point is to keep the victim on edge, that they, the abuser has the upper hand in public opinion at all times, in what the public believes, what they can get away with, the fear that they can still plant in their victim after the victim is gone.
Anyway, being told that she has to go on a boat without a life preserver, even though she is afraid of water, is also common. The abuser wants his victim to be scared, and that is a common part of the abusive agenda.
Also she has been hit just in case she is attracted to the neighbor doctor who is the owner and captain of the boat, so there is that to be fearful about as well.
In other scenes we find out that she has conquered her fear of water with swimming lessons at the Y. She doesn't tell her husband that she is taking swimming lessons however, because it is one way that she can have a leg up on him.
Abused women will try to gain skills so that they can handle situations where their partner keeps toying with their fears and insecurities, and putting them in danger. Keeping their abusers calm and secure by appearing to be in a fawning role while not being suspected of gaining any kind of strengths, and conquering their fears with plans, is how escapes from abusers can happen, and does happen.
Some of the women who are in the same classes notice her constant bruises too. This "secret" is also kept from him so that obtaining the skill can save her life, and does not put her in more jeopardy.
Anyway when they are out in the boat without life jackets on, she keeps very quiet. They encounter some rough waves and somehow she goes missing off the boat.
Suddenly he has lost his toy, his servant, his robot to the waters. The coast guards can't find her either. Putting her in danger went a little too far.
But, she has managed to use her skill at that very moment to slip away and fake her own death.
She swims to a buoy and then when Martin and the doctor are out of sight, she swims to shore, picks up a bag she has kept for the purpose of running away, and attempts to flush her wedding ring down the toilet. She thinks she has flushed it, but it actually hasn't gone down all the way which is the one thing that eventually puts her in danger again.
Regardless, it works for awhile. There is a memorial service for her.
KEEPING SAFE
We find a number of ways that Laura tries to keep safe. Fawning and "doing what she is told" is one way that survivors of abuse stay safe, but it isn't exactly full proof as we see from "the hitting incident" (being blamed for something that hasn't happened) and the boating accident. The dangers of staying outweigh the risks of escape, especially an escape where she can take up an alias, get a job where an identification number is not required, and in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
The alias she takes on is "Sara Waters". "Waters" is not a tidbit that escaped me. It seems fitting as that is how she transformed and went from her old life to a new life.
The other thing that Laura (Sara from now on) did before her escape was to plan ahead. While Sara was still with Martin, she told Martin that her stroke-impaired, blind mother, Chloe, was dead, but in actuality, Sara moved Chloe to an Iowa nursing home.
This keeps both mother and daughter safe from Martin's intrusion and interference. A lot of abusive husbands do not like their wives to have a close loving relationship with anyone, let alone with their family, and especially their mother. Mothers are usually protective and that irritates abusive husbands a great deal, unless the mother is abusive too (unfortunately, for female victims of maternal abuse, being married to an abusive husband is common, because abuse was normalized when she was growing up, and it presents a bigger challenge for escape than what Sara has to go through).
In this case, Sara's mother is not abusive. She is sweet, and Sara cares a great deal about her.
It is probably one reason why Sara has the inner strength to leave her abuser. People from loving functional families often do not get into abusive relationships in the first place (it's not familiar, something doesn't seem right, "being perfect" was never a requirement for love and consideration before, pleasing only one person between the two of them doesn't feel normal, controlling everything isn't what most people do, and so on). But occasionally even women from loving families find themselves in abusive marriages because the predator can keep the love bombing act going for a long time, at least until he has a wedding ring on her finger, and feels he can slowly begin to take "ownership" of her.
Anyway, the fact that she is able to execute her escape plan so well with forethought, and enough confidence (without fear) to actually get out of her marriage in a way that provides her and her mother with the most protection, is probably, in large part, because she came from a loving family.
However, abusers like to seduce who they perceive to be "weak individuals", people who seem down on their luck, and open to control and coercion. The fact that Sara does not have relatives visiting her all of the time, and that she has a disabled mother, has, undoubtedly something to do with why Martin chose her. But luckily Sara retains the mental and emotional strength she had under loving, supportive parents, and knows that she is not being treated right, and understands that he is dangerous too, even if she does not have the "external strength" of a family who will protect her against him.
ENTER NEW GUY, BEN WOODWARD
Ben Woodward is a drama teacher, an ingratiating Cedar Falls neighbor, and he is attracted to Sara. Things don't go smoothly in the beginning because she is still reeling from the abuse of her husband. So things are slow in the romance department and if Ben wants her, he will have to have patience while she goes through throws of trepidation when he kisses her or when he he gets passionate.
The thing is, I found Ben too forward, and Sara more willing to go forward than I have seen from most trauma victims from abusive marriages and relationships. Somehow it did not ring as true for me as, say, Morwenna in Poldark who takes a long time to heal and trust again. People who have been through hell just can't afford to blindly trust again.
But the scenes with Ben were a nice break from the terrifying Martin who eventually finds the ring in the toilet and goes looking for Sara.
Ben and Sara raid the costume room where he works, and we delight in the fact that Sara is finally able to enjoy life, revel in her newfound freedom, in her youth and beauty, and to be in a healthy relationship. The costume room is also a good metaphor for trying on a lot of different hats, of breaking free and wondering who she will be after being a victim.
Her life moves forward and she starts relaxing ...
THE STALKING
When Martin finds the ring, he looks both horrified and enraged that she would leave him. He has said a number of times that they were meant to stay together forever. He thought his commands would stick.
He finds that Sara is probably still alive, and that Chloe never died.
When Sara goes to visit her mother in the nursing home, she wears a disguise and dresses as a man. The secret between mother and daughter is that Chloe is to call her daughter a nephew so that both of them can be safe if Martin ever catches on that Sara escaped.
Martin travels to Chloe's nursing home, and poses as a detective. He learns that Chloe's "nephew" has just visited. In fact, Martin and Sara-in-disguise miss each other within seconds.
From there, Martin discovers Sara's whereabouts, and sees her a number of times with Ben in various situations, with her arms around Ben, laughing with Ben, being more relaxed than Martin has probably ever seen her. Again, he looks both enraged and shocked at what Laura has become, what her new-found happiness looks like, what her new relationship looks like.
Then he makes plans to terrorize her.
Stalking is fairly common with batterers. Not all of them stalk, but many do. This is the problem of looking at your wife as a possession and as a toy who you think you have to beat in order to make "it" work right. It is obvious that she hasn't "worked" in that way for him because she is in another life. So why does he think the same scare tactics will work again?
And that is the problem. Abusers use the same tactics over and over again, thinking that the same tactics will work somehow when it is obvious they don't and can't.
They can also become fixated on retaliation and revenge for the wrongs they believe have been committed against them ("What about all of the flowers I gave her!?"). Since many abusers can't and don't self reflect, he feels like a victim, a victim of infidelity, of lies, of being forsaken by a woman he claims to love and who he thought he had trained enough not to look at another man.
Playing the victim is incredibly common for narcissists. Most batterers refuse to listen to their partners' feelings. They don't want to feel empathy for their partner. They like to see their partner squirming in fear, in pain and in being uncomfortable. They don't want to meet their partner half way. They don't want their partner to feel happy (a happy partner hurts their ego and insecurities). But, who wouldn't leave under those circumstances?
But batterers cannot begin to see why she would leave, and their minds don't generally go in the direction of why anyway. They are so caught up in themselves and their fantasies that even though they batter, they believe they are great men for the flowers, and therefor deserving of the utmost loyalty, dedication and subservience. So because he is so caught up in his own feelings, and not hers, all that Martin really sees is that he has been duped and betrayed and he plans a retaliation and revenge against her for it.
All of this is pretty common.
THE REVENGE
Martin eventually figures out where Sara lives and breaks into her house while she is picnicking outside with Ben. When she is back in her house again alone, she notices that the towels have been straightened and that the kitchen shelves are rearranged in the precise way that Martin liked them.
A lot has been said by critics about these scenes. Like: why would he do that? What's the point of these scenes? They believe it is far-fetched. And it is off the wall for normal guys. But malignant narcissists and sociopaths who are predatory and insist they be in control of their wives at all times, with the belief that the wife is programmed to think about him at all times including her having to live up to his standards of perfection? And being incredibly angry that she isn't living "the programmed life" he drilled into her so many times? So common! It's just another part of stalking. Breaking into a house just to cause psychological and emotional distress to their "victim who-isn't-working-like-a-programmed-toy", yes, they are very capable of these kinds of actions. Breaking into someone's house (illegal), and even stealing in these cases, is just as common as rearranging things to scare her.
Why stealing? You can disable your wife a lot more by stealing than by stalking and scaring her: taking her checkbooks, taking any money laying around, taking her driver's license, taking the keys to her car, taking away her phone numbers so that she cannot call anyone, taking away things like eye glasses and medications so that she is disabled there too, even taking the food off of the shelves and clothes out of the closet, anything to keep her from proceeding in her present life.
It is also hard to get justice in these situations. The police may say:
"Ma'm. This is your husband. You may not live with him any more, but under law you are joint owners of the same property still. You will have to work out what your ownership rights are concerning the property. So he likes to arrange cans in a certain way. We cannot make an arrest based on his housekeeping preferences. If you were in danger, why did you run away? Why didn't you go to a domestic violence shelter, get photographed and checked over by medical personnel for the bruises you say you endured, get a ruling of protection and proceeded with divorce proceedings? There is nothing we can do for you. If he is violent again, call us. Otherwise, this is a civil matter which you will have to discuss with your own attorney." And we know that civil legal matters take a long time and are not immediately helpful for victims who are in imminent danger.
So my point is that it is more likely that he would steal plus rearrange the cans of food and towels.
In the next scenes, Martin traps her at gunpoint before she can escape. When Ben knocks on the door, Sara tells Ben that she is tired. But Ben sees through this lie somehow, and decides to break down the door.
He struggles with Martin and Martin knocks him unconscious. As he aims the gun at Ben, Sara distracts him and kicks him in the groin.
Sara grabs Martin's gun and holds him at gunpoint. She calls the police and informs them that she shot an intruder. When she hangs up, she shoots Martin.
This is often why it is better to go to a domestic violence shelter at the get-go than to get into a situation where you feel you have to murder your husband to keep him from murdering you. There are an awful lot of domestic violence victims in prison for having shot their husbands. In some instances, some of these victims never saw a situation coming where their husband or boyfriend would try to murder them, and they wouldn't escape to a domestic violence center in those situations obviously, so cops telling victims to go to a shelter is not an answer in every case. But a lot of the murders committed in the U.S.A. by women are those who were in imminent danger of losing their lives from their husband or boyfriend.
Back in the 1990s when the film was made, you couldn't install a security system with cameras everywhere, but this would obviously be helpful to any other Lauras and Saras who have husbands or boyfriends with a proclivity to stalk, break in, cause bodily harm or even to rearrange cans. Learning how to use a firearm may not be a bad idea when you have violent stalker types of men in your life.
"The cheap shot" and formulaic "thriller scene" is when Martin seems to be dead, but isn't, and seizes Laura by her hair and grabs the gun and shoots her. However, the gun is empty. Martin finally dies from his wounds and Sara revives Ben.
The reason I am giving the film four stars is because of the very last scenes. It is so unlikely that Martin did not know how many rounds were in the gun. It is quite a bit more unlikely than the rearrangement of the kitchen shelves. Someone who is anal retentive and Machiavellian enough to plan out the revenge of killing his wife can't keep track of the number of bullets in the chamber?
And then when Martin revives from being dead and gains repossession of the gun? And has the strength to get Sara in a compromised position? Not too likely either.
This is where it falls apart for me, and a lot of other people. But for me, I'm not throwing the baby out with the bath water. There are a lot of pertinent scenes in this film to ignore the film altogether. But the last scene is also why domestic violence films should probably not be thrillers.
For all of the great acting and story line, it needed a more thoughtful ending.
The ending of taking Sara away in handcuffs (like Tess of the D'Ubervilles), might have sparked a lot more interest and discussion of the film.
Another ending might have been the police taking away the injured-but-not-dead Martin, trial proceedings, and an ending based on the trial.
At any rate, I would highly recommend that any movie-maker who wants to highlight domestic violence in a film that they interview some of the women who are incarcerated for "self defense", and particularly if their man was stalking them, during a domestic violence episode. Real stories are better than made up ones.
This story was originally a novel and could have largely been written by the author's (Nancy Price) experience. But I doubt the ending with Martin reviving to shoot at her again with an unloaded gun was her experience. Is there a chance? Maybe, but a slim one.
At any rate, there is an audience for films about domestic violence considering this one grossed such a big profit, and that it is still being watched and recommended by domestic violence survivors who don't know where else to turn except to this film to explain to others what they lived through. You can find some comments from survivors (reviewers who survived domestic violence) on the Amazon page for the movie, the Amazon page for the book and the Good Reads reviews on the book.
Obviously there is a huge loyal audience for movies and books like this. There is probably even more of an audience than in the 1990s when the film was made since domestic violence incidences are going up. They just need to be better movies than "typical thrillers", to have a more thoughtful ending, to be more "all inclusively" accurate in terms of what real-life women actually experience in these situations.
Certainly get a pretty woman (no pun intended) to act the main character. A lot of pretty and innocent women are domestic violence survivors. You can still flesh it out with a Sara-Ben type of romance (the juxtaposition is good to see too for an audience), and some of what happens in police stations and with lawyers - the disappointments, the difficult lengthy ways that domestic abuse survivors have to leave and live without money and somehow re-make their lives from scratch, as well as the rewards of surviving and thriving for some of them.
Make it more of a ground-breaking film that can change society's attitudes like Kramer vs. Kramer instead of a thriller. Then you might have the attention of the nation and its law-makers. Thank you!
And by the way, we need more movies that highlight victims. So many movies are being made about the abusers, and many more about psychopaths, especially psychopaths who have power. I don't know about my readers, but I'm pretty sick of those films.
MORE READING
Sleeping with the Enemy (film) - from Amazon
Sleeping with the Enemy (book) - from Amazon
Sleeping with the Enemy (book) - from Good Reads
Sleeping with the Enemy? - by Rome Neal for CBS News
A real life ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’ - by Sara Vanden Berge (news editor) for Stephenville Empire Tribune
Letters To Louis: Sleeping with the enemy. A modern tale of coercive control. - by Afsana Lachaux
Irish Sleeping with the Enemy star Patrick Bergin claims film helped victims of domestic abuse - for Irish Mirror
"Sleeping with the Enemy" Remake to Bring the Glory Days of Trashy '90's Thrillers into the 21st Century - by Chris Evangelista for Slash Film (2019)
A COUPLE OF VIDEOS
official trailer:
Julia Roberts Sleeping with the enemy (interview):
Patrick Bergin Sleeping with the enemy interview:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comment may be published after moderator's acceptance. Thank you for your thoughtful reply.