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Director: Ildikó Enyedi.
Writer: Ildikó Enyedi.
Star: Gijs Naber, Léa Seydoux, Louis Garrel.
Synopsis: A sea captain bets an associate that he will marry the first woman who enters the café. In walks Lizzy (Léa Seydoux). The rest is history.
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After conquering us with On Body and Soul (2017), Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi embraced a challenge and wrote and directed The Story of My Wife, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by poet Milán Füst. The story, set in the 1920s, is divided into multiple chapters that are introduced as acquired experience by Captain Jakob Störr (Gijs Naber), as if he were observing his life and defining specific highlights and morals of his doomed love story.
Devoted to his job and dealing with a mysterious stomach disease, Jakob takes to heart the advice of his boat’s cook to get a wife. Leading a lonely life as a sailor, it is not as if many women are vying for his love. Aware of this, when he is on land, he makes a bet with a friend to marry the first woman that walks into the café. This person happens to be Lizzy (Lea Seydoux), a self-assured French lady that humors Jakob’s impromptu proposition. Soon enough, they are married and testing their physical attraction as a possible foundation for a lasting relationship.
As the film is solely explored from Jakob’s point of view, we witness the distrust he develops for his wife, even though there are no real grounds for this uneasiness. They start a toxic game where emotional abuse, challenging attitudes and outbursts of passion mark their volatile relationship. They had the terrible luck of finding someone to match their stubbornness, a decisiveness that proves to be frustrating when neither one of them is entirely honest with each other nor willing to let go of the marriage.
There’s no doubt that Enyedi’s film is challenging. With almost three hours of running time, The Story of My Life feels shallow and senseless at times, even though it is gorgeous to look at. Enyedi creates an elegant and restrained romantic epic, characteristics that constantly work against the film. The dialogues, complicated and refined, feel too rehearsed and polished to be believable. Considering that English is neither Störr’s nor Lizzy’s mother tongue, their expressions are too neat, constantly reminding us that they are actors delivering rehearsed dialogues.
While Naber is a physically compelling leading man, his interpretation is wooden. I wonder if he would have felt more comfortable with a less convoluted script. The fact that he shares no chemistry with Seydoux is another challenge. The movie has all the elements to be a memorable epic, and yet, it often falters because of its refinement and self-contempt.
Nevertheless, its elegance works in other areas. Marcell Rév’s cinematography is sharp and meticulous, standing out in scenes that take place on high seas and offering wide takes that inspire to see them in a loop. The score by Ádám Balázs, with pianos and violins, matches the drama that unfolds on screen. The excellence in its technical departments is the main virtue of the film, and the reason why we keep seeing it, even as it tests our patience several times.
The story at the core is challenging to portray without access to the thoughts of the characters. Considering that we witness the version of an unreliable narrator, it is understandable that Lizzy is hazy and mysterious. We never truly learn anything about her, and the relationship that she has with Jakob is superficial and frail.
Jakob is also an enigma. He sees himself as the victim of the story, something fascinating when we consider that he is the one cheating on his wife, physically assaulting her, or setting up private investigators to follow her around. While he is not sympathetic, this theme is fascinating and compelling. Precisely this aspect of the story is the one that offers a reward long after the movie has finished. The Story of My Wife demands patience from an audience that may find it challenging to stay with deplorable characters for three hours.
Following the steps of A Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017), The Story of My Wife presents an example of how love is not supposed to be. As that film, Enyedi’s feature is visually captivating. Its immaculate beauty makes it difficult to resist to.
With all its flaws, I can’t help but admire and appreciate this epic. It is elegantly and masterfully presented, and while it may not provoke an instant feeling of gratification, it is bound to stay in the mind of the spectator long after it’s finished.
