Sleeping with the Enemy

Laura's husband Martin looks like a perfect man from outside. At home he is physically, emotionally and sexually violent. Using a sailing accident, she stages her own death and moves to Cedar Falls, Iowa under another name. Martin finds out she is alive. Joseph Ruben directed, from Nancy Price's novel. Julia Roberts plays Laura and Patrick Bergin plays Martin. Its best idea is showing the order rather than the violence. When Martin gets inside her new house the hand towels are perfectly aligned and the contents of the kitchen cabinets are lined up; nothing needs to be said about what he does. Reviews split. Roger Ebert gave it one and a half stars out of four and wrote that it is a slasher movie in disguise. Audiences gave it an A minus CinemaScore. The box office was enormous: 175 million dollars on a 19 million budget. At the time it set the record for the biggest domestic opening for a female-led film, taking 13 million and passing Aliens. Who it is for: viewers who like nineties thrillers and early Roberts. Who it is not for: anyone who needs the subject treated seriously. The film uses domestic violence as genre mechanics rather than realistic drama, which was exactly Ebert's objection.