The Story of My Wife
Set in the 1920s, a middle-aged Dutch seaman bets his cynical business partner that he will marry the first woman who enters the café they are sitting in. Captain Jakob Störr (played by the dashing Gijs Naber) is looking for happiness, so in walks the mysterious and stylish Lizzy (French superstar Léa Seydoux's another amazing performance), who is amused by the idea of a sudden marriage. Their lush affair told in seven chapters, exploring different stages of a cat and mouse romantic relationship.
The freighter captain is not comfortable when out in society with the lively Lizzy. Back on the ship he is stark and silent, but he has a lot of time to think. He convinces himself that his wife, who lives alone in an apartment in Paris, is having an affair with her friend, the young writer Dedin (Louis Garrel). Störr and Lizzy soon leave frivolous Paris and move to the colder Hamburg, where they slowly drift apart. The captain’s own fears and doubts seem to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then comes a surprising turn of events, flipping their lives again.
Ildikó Enyedi’s grandiose ninth feature -her first in English- is an adaptation of the Hungarian poet Milán Füst’s novel of the same title – and loosely based on the legend of the cursed Flying Dutchman.
Zoltan Huber
Ildikó Enyedi (b. 1955) began her career as a concept and media artist. She was a member of the art group Indigo and the Balázs Béla Studio, the only independent film studio in Eastern Europe before 1989. She then turned to film directing and screenwriting. Enyedi’s first film "My Twientieth Century" won the Cannes Camera d’Or at Cannes film Festival in 1989 and was chosen as one of the 12 Best Hungarian Films of All Time and selected among the 10 Best Films of the Year by The New York Times. In 1994, "Magic Hunter" was selected in competition at Venice Film Festival. Her 1999 feature "Simon Magus" won Locarno’s Special Jury Prize, and 1997’s "Tamas and Juli" won Belfort’s Grand Prix. In 2017, Enyedi’s former feature, "On Body and Soul", won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale Film Festival and has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. "The Story of My Wife" was competed in this year Cannes Film Festival and is her eight full-length fiction feature film.
Selected: Vakond (Mole, 1987), Az én XX. századom (My Twentieth Century, 1989, PÖFF 2021), Simon mágus (Simon, the Magician, 1999), Teströl és lélekröl (On Body and Soul, 2017), A feleségem története (The Story of My Wife, 2020)
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