Sleeping With the Enemy

599 3-7-91
Julia Roberts, a beauty who can also act, is one of the best things in recent movies. By my count she hasn't made a really good movie yet, though watching her wait tables in Mystic Pizza, die with dignity in Steel Magnolias, shop till she drops in Pretty Woman or practice New Age medicine in Flatliners provides blissful compensation while we wait. But don't get your hopes up about Sleeping With the Enemy. Scripted by Oscar winner Ron Bass (Rain Man) and directed by the skilled Joseph Ruben (The Stepfather), the film concerns Laura Burney (Roberts), a woman whose husband, Martin Burney (Patrick Bergin), has been beating her steadily for four years and threatening worse if she calls the police. The slightest infraction (an unfolded bathroom towel, a disorganized cupboard) sets him off.

Roberts plays these early scenes with striking subtlety, freezing her face into a mask of serenity so as not to arouse suspicion. And Bergin, who was so heroic as Sir Richard Burton in Mountains of the Moon, is astonishing as the sadist in sheep's clothing. Ruben, as he proved in The Stepfather, is a master at detecting the brutality festering under blandness.

But after Laura fakes her death and escapes to Iowa, where she finds a new identity and a good man -- Ben Woodward, a drama teacher nicely done by Kevin Anderson -- the movie goes irredeemably soft. Laura even tries on theatrical costumes and dances to "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Runaround Sue." It's as if Ruben had stopped to do a few videos for VH-1. Though Sleeping rouses itself for a corker of a climax, by then it has lost its claim to be anything more than a serviceable shocker. Roberts remains a marvel. But she still hasn't found the movie to test her talents.

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(Posted: Dec 8, 2000)