Sleeping with the Enemy (1991 film)
| Sleeping with the Enemy | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Joseph Ruben |
| Produced by | Leonard Goldberg |
| Screenplay by |
Ronald Bass Bruce Joel Rubin (uncredited) |
| Based on |
Sleeping with the Enemy by Nancy Price |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Cinematography | John Lindley |
| Edited by | George Bowers |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
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Release date
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Running time
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97 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $19 million |
| Box office | $175 million |
Sleeping with the Enemy is a 1991 psychological thriller film directed by Joseph Ruben and starring Julia Roberts and Patrick Bergin. The film is based on Nancy Price's 1987 novel of the same name. Roberts plays a woman who escapes from her abusive husband, from Cape Cod to Cedar Falls, Iowa, where she captures the attention of a kindly college drama teacher.
Laura Burney (Julia Roberts) lives in a beautiful home by the beach on Cape Cod with her husband, Martin (Patrick Bergin), a charming, handsome and wealthy investment counselor. Beneath his charm, however, Martin is an angry, possessive control freak who who has been physically and emotionally abusing Laura throughout their marriage. One day, Martin believes Laura has been flirting with an attractive neighbor, and he physically assaults her in a jealous rage. In an effort to escape Martin, Laura fakes her own death at sea in a storm while the couple are boating. Because Laura had deliberately led Martin to believe that she could not swim, he believed she had died once she was lost overboard. However, Laura was able to swim safely to shore, because she had recently taken swimming lessons at the YWCA. Laura secretly returns home, retrieves some clothing and cash she had hidden away in preparation, disguises herself, and leaves home after "flushing" her wedding ring down the toilet.
Laura moves to Cedar Falls, Iowa. In preparation, she has told Martin that her mother, Chloe Williams (Elizabeth Lawrence), died, and pretends to attend the funeral, but secretly moves her to a nursing home in Iowa. She rents a modest house and adopts the name Sara Waters. In Cedar Falls, she meets Ben Woodward (Kevin Anderson), who teaches drama at University of Northern Iowa. A relationship develops, but suffers a setback when Ben discovers that her real name is not Sara. After a date, Laura is unable to be physically intimate with Ben, and the next day, she confesses that she is on the run from her abusive husband.
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