Directed by Ronald Bass and Joseph Ruben, and starring Julia Roberts and Patrick Borgin, the thriller "Sleeping with the Enemy" expresses the irreversible harm of domestic violence to women from a female perspective, reflecting the current situation of marriage in which women lack self-protection awareness.
Unhappy marriages often have elements of cold violence and mental control.
Since their new marriage, Lola and her husband Martin have been living in a beautiful bay villa, where the sky is blue and the water is like a fairytale dream. However, after a short honeymoon period, the control desire under the appearance of her husband Martin's gentleman gradually became apparent. He always gave Lola an irresistible order in a tone that seemed to be gentle, and Martin set a dinner party with the people, and Lola had to go. Even though Lola was already dressed and put on makeup, as soon as Martin spoke, Lola had to change back to her liking. Towels in the bathroom must be hung in the same length, and the various food cans in the cupboard must be neatly arranged. At any point of inclination, Martin would sternly "remind" Lola, saying that this was the only way to make Lola remember.
One morning Martin greeted the neighbor doctor who was fiddling with the sailboat downstairs, and the young and handsome doctor praised Martin's beautiful villa and wife. The inadvertent words made Martin feel bad, and when he returned home, Martin asked Lola if she had been standing by the window to see the doctor all day, and whether his wife had not invited the doctor to the house when she was not there. Martin felt insulted and began punching and kicking Lola as he spoke. After each violence, Martin would say sweet words to Lola or buy gifts for Lola to forgive herself. Lola seems to have become accustomed to her husband's moody temper, and in the face of Martin's love, Lola forces herself to cooperate, but in fact, her heart is numb. The place is no longer a beautiful bay villa, but a prison from which there is no escape.
In the face of her husband's atrocities, Lola did not think about fleeing. Six months ago, Lola sneaked out and was caught, and although she explained that she was going to the funeral of her only relative's mother, she still couldn't escape Martin's beating, and then she didn't want to get out of Martin's sight. The doctor invites Martin and Lola to sail the sea together in a sailboat, and Martin knows that Lola is afraid of the sea and cannot swim, but insists on taking Lola with her. On the night of the trip to sea, a storm unexpectedly blew up, and the hull of the ship shook violently during the rainstorm. Lola was unusually calm, and just as they had to return to sail, the ship's sails were broken by a storm. Martin and the doctor were busy fixing it, but Lola, who was sitting at the other end, was gone. Martin shouted Lola's name into the sea with all his might, and then frantically searched with his yacht and helicopter, but in the end he did not find Lola, he thought that Lola had been buried in the sea, so he had to hold a funeral.
But what Martin didn't know was that night Lola had jumped into the water by herself and swam back home while they were salvaging at sea. Lola grabbed the luggage she had prepared, hurriedly changed her clothes, and cut her hair to change into a wig. Before leaving, she took off the ring on her hand and threw it into the toilet, then she wiped off all traces of the house and drove away in the stormy night. Along the way, the sun was shining, and the darkest hours of Lola's three years, seven months and six days of life seemed to have moved away. She came to a town, rented a new house, and her life was renewed. Lola would deliberately mess up the habitual neatly arranged towels after bathing, push down the stacked cans in the cupboard, and she wanted to be herself, to break Martin's long-standing repression of herself. Here Lola accidentally met the lively and cheerful neighbor boy Benn, although Lola has a lot of secrets from Ben because of her past, Benn still fell in love with this slightly mysterious beautiful neighbor, cheerful and active Ben invited Lola to dinner, and helped to introduce Lola to work, and the relationship between the two gradually warmed up. But Lola can never accept Bane's intimate touch on her, and Lola with a new life may no longer be depressed, but the inner fear that Martin has caused her is difficult to dispel.
Martin, who had lost Lola, became more and more gloomy and grumpy, and one day Martin received a call from a stranger. The other party claimed to be Lola's swimming class companion, and heard that Lola had died, so he called. Martin told him that he had made a mistake because his wife, Lola, had drowned in the sea because she couldn't swim. The other party was surprised to say that Lola performed well in swimming class, and in order to prove that she did not recognize the wrong person, she asked Martin whether Lola was learning gymnastics, because there were always many scars on her back. Lola didn't learn gymnastics, but it was true that she had scars on her body. Because the scars were caused by Martin himself, he hung up the phone and rushed home to see if he could find any clues. It turns out that he accidentally finds the ring that Lola has thrown in the toilet, and Martin can now be sure that Lola is not dead, and he angrily embarks on a journey to find his wife.
Martin first went to the nursing home where Lola's mother lived, and when he wanted to ask the dean if Lola had any other relatives, he accidentally learned from the dean that Lola's mother was not dead, and that Lola had transferred her mother from the hospital six months earlier. Lola now lives in the house is actually near her mother's new nursing home, she secretly called her mother to make an appointment to meet, but Martin, who spent a lot of money to hire a private investigator, came to the nursing home first, and he did not fight grass and snakes but waited for rabbits. Lola, disguised to avoid the eyes, came to visit her mother in a nursing home, where she told her that she had run away from Martin and now had a job and income, and had a new boyfriend.
At this time, Martin in the corridor was lying to the nurse that he knew Lola's mother, and blindly made some excuses, tricking the nurse into telling him the visitor records of Lola's mother's room, with a gentleman's appearance, and the affectionate Tone made the nurse sister believe in him. Lola, dressed as a boy, rubbed shoulders with Martin several times in the sanatorium but was not found, but just as Lola was leaving on her front foot and Martin was about to leave, the nurse stopped Martin and told him that someone had just come to see Lola's mother today, but it was not a woman but a young man, so Martin came to Lola's mother's room and pretended to be Lola's friend and asked where Lola was. He tells Lola's mother that Lola's brutal husband is looking for Lola. Because Lola's mother is blind and very worried about Lola, she tells Martin the address of Lola's boyfriend. Martin finished talking and planned to kill Lola's mother, but was interrupted by the nurse who came in to deliver the medicine. Then he goes to the place where Lola's boyfriend Benn works, follows Bane to find Lola's residence, he quietly follows the two, and sees that the two are living a sweet and happy life, Martin is furious.
In the evening, Bane came to the house and invited Lola to the outside lawn for a picnic, and Lola returned home alone after dinner. She found that the bathroom towels were neatly hung up again, and she panicked to the cupboard, which was also neatly arranged in the jars, which surprised Lola, and she broke down and cried and ran outside the house. At this moment, the living room sounded the melody she had once known most, but also the most feared, which was a must-have song every time Martin violently abused her. Martin's chilling voice came from behind, and he held Lola from behind with a gun in his hand.
At this point, Bane knocks on the door outside, and Martin asks Lo to pull open the door and threaten to kill Bane. After opening the door, Lola refused Bane's invitation with tears in her eyes, and after Lola closed the door, Bane did not really leave, he knocked in from outside the house while Martin let down his guard, but was knocked unconscious by the physically strong Martin with a gun. Martin, as usual, sweetly tried to coax Lola back, but his obedient Lola had already died in the storm. Lola grabbed Martin's pistol and aimed it at Martin, and without hesitation, she picked up the phone on the ground and called the police, gave her name and address, and said, Please come, I just shot an intruder. Martin's eyes widened in horror, but Lola did not hesitate to shoot Martin three times in a row, Martin fell, and Lola collapsed to the ground. Just as she lowered her guard, Martin on the ground picked up the pistol at some point, grabbed Lola's head, aimed it at her and pulled the trigger. But there was no more bullet in the pistol, and Martin fell down again. Lola burst into tears and walked over to Bane to wake him up, the two hugged and kissed each other tightly, and Lola said goodbye to the fear that Martin had brought her for three years.
Obviously, it is a slightly thrilling movie, but I saw the shadow of a fairy tale in it. The paranoid and cruel Martin likes to call Lola his princess, and he wears the cloak of a gentle and considerate prince, tricks the innocent and simple princess into his castle, and then reveals his demonic nature and wants to imprison her forever. The princess who has endured humiliation for a long time takes the opportunity to escape and meets a kind and brave knight, but in the end it is not the brave knight who defeats the demon, but the princess who has always been beautiful and weak, and the princess who can defeat herself, defeat the demon, and rescue the knight is the most beautiful.