Film

Enemies, a Love Story

Name: Enemies, a Love Story
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Released: 1989
Cast: Ron Silver, Anjelica Huston, Lena Olin, Małgorzata Zajączkowska, Alan King

A Polish-Jewish ghostwriter in 1980s New York juggles three women: his wife from the camps, a Holocaust survivor he's been hiding, and a vibrant new lover. It's tender and darkly funny—a film about desire, guilt, and the impossible math of the human heart. For anyone who believes comedy and catastrophe can coexist.

TMDb rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like melancholy comedy about survival and divided loyalties, where a bleak situation is handled with wit and a fondness for messy, stubborn people.

Skip it if you need your romance light and your tone steady, since it swings between comedy and sorrow and can feel busy when it wants to be tender.

What it asks of you: Expect a leisurely two hours, mostly talk, with the attention going to dialogue and a long run of domestic complication rather than plot momentum.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Unbearable Lightness of Being1988

Concurrent adaptation of another philosophical novel about erotic entanglement and competing loves. Similar structure, similar tone: heavy ideas treated with sensual grace and wry humor. Both films know that wanting multiple people isn't simple.

But The sex scenes feel dated and the film can drift into pretension when it gets too philosophical about living.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being poster

A Serious Man2009

Jewish protagonist wrestling with faith, desire, and competing obligations in a universe that won't grant him clarity. Dark comedy about a man imploding under the weight of his own contradictions. Same register: funny because it's true.

But The Coens offer no catharsis or resolution. If you need your protagonist to learn something, you will leave angry.

Hannah and Her Sisters1986

Ensemble piece about intimacy, infidelity, and the tangle of urban relationships. Allen's finest work: witty, generous, genuinely moving. Treats romantic muddle as the human condition rather than a problem to solve.

But Woody Allen. If you can't separate the art from the artist, understandable and noted. The neuroses can also feel repetitive.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Enemies, a Love Story

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Marriage of Maria Braun1979

Both films center on characters shaped by the Holocaust and its aftermath, using romantic entanglement as a way to examine what remains of the self when history has tried to erase it. Both understand that desire isn't redemptive—it's just what humans do while broken.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's masterpiece about a woman navigating love and survival in postwar Germany. Like *Enemies*, it asks what desire means when the ground itself is unstable. The same dark intelligence but in a completely different key: austere, architectural, operatic.

But Slow, severe, and emotionally punishing. Fassbinder demands patience and offers no warmth. The politics are complex and the ending is harsh.

Crimes and Misdemeanors1989

Another Allen film, but this one is darker: examining guilt, moral compromise, and whether goodness matters if nobody's watching. Comedy that doesn't flinch from suggesting the world is crueler than we'd like.

But Long and somewhat baggy. The parallel storylines don't integrate seamlessly and the tonal shifts can feel jarring.

Barton Fink1991

Another 1989-adjacent Coen Brothers work about a man consumed by the gap between what he wants to do and what he's actually doing. Comedy built on psychological unraveling. Darkly hilarious.

But Deliberately claustrophobic and increasingly surreal. If you need narrative coherence this will exhaust you.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover1989

Another 1989 film about desire, transgression, and appetite in a baroque, darkly comic register. Peter Greenaway is doing something completely different but the energy is similar: beautiful, filthy, transgressive.

But Extremely graphic sex and violence. Greenaway's style is deliberately artificial and hostile to easy viewing. Not for everyone.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover poster

Kissing Jessica Stein2002

Lighter tone but same intellectual playfulness about desire and partnership. Two people discovering they want something different than they thought. Funny about the gap between who we are and who we imagined being.

But Much gentler and smaller. If you're looking for the moral weight or the Yiddish melancholy, this won't deliver.

In the Mood for Love2000

Both films treat the affair not as scandal but as the inevitable shape of wanting. Both understand that the people we love often don't match the people we're attached to, and that this isn't solvable by being a better person.

Wong Kar-wai's film about two neighbors in 1960s Hong Kong who discover their spouses are having an affair. No explicit passion, only longing. The visual opposite of Mazursky's film—achingly beautiful rather than lived-in and messy—but identical in its understanding that unfulfilled desire is the human condition.

But Glacially paced. Repetitive scenes meant to hypnotize rather than advance plot. If you need narrative momentum, you will check your phone.