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A man declares he will marry the next woman to walk into a bar. That’s the most interesting thing about Ildiko Enyedi’s The Story Of My Wife, a flat Cannes Film Festival competition entry that squanders its intriguing premise.

An adaptation of Milán Füst’s 1920s set novel, it enjoys attractive settings but suffers from fatal flaws. Chief of these is the decision to hire international actors for a script that’s in the English language. Dutch actor Gijs Naber plays it straight as Jakob Störr, the sea captain who decides to marry the conveniently beautiful Lizzy (Léa Seydoux) when he spies her in the Parisian bar. Mystifyingly, she agrees. He goes off to sea; we don’t know what she gets up to while he’s away. He comes back, worried about what she’s been up to while he’s been away. It probably involved Louis Garrel.

In The Story of My Wife (A feleségem története), the strong auteurist voice of one of Eastern Europe’s most fascinating filmmakers, Hungarian distaff director Ildikó Enyedi (My 20th Century, Simon the Magician, On Body and Soul), seems not only muted but even slightly musty. This adaptation of Milán Füst’s most famous novel, set in the 1920s in Paris, Hamburg and at sea, is divided into chapters and should feel novelistic. Instead, especially its midsection more often feels like an endless feuilleton in which an upright Dutch sea captain and his flighty French wife seem to play a monotonous game of cat and mouse,...

In The Story of My Wife (A feleségem története), the strong auteurist voice of one of Eastern Europe’s most fascinating filmmakers, Hungarian distaff director Ildikó Enyedi (My 20th Century, Simon the Magician, On Body and Soul), seems not only muted but even slightly musty. This adaptation of Milán Füst’s most famous novel, set in the 1920s in Paris, Hamburg and at sea, is divided into chapters and should feel novelistic. Instead, especially its midsection more often feels like an endless feuilleton in which an upright Dutch sea captain and his flighty French wife seem to play a monotonous game of cat and mouse,...

Though legendary for a callous disregard for the lives of the sailors who criss-cross her stormy surfaces, the sea turns out to be a far milder mistress than Léa Seydoux in Ildikó Enyedi’s handsome but heavy-bottomed “The Story of My Wife,” the Hungarian director’s first return to Cannes since winning the Camera d’Or for her charming 1989 debut, “My Twentieth Century.” Starring Imola Lang’s superb 1920s/’30s production design, Leá Seydoux’s bouncy, tousled bob and Seydoux herself — in roughly that order — the film probably contains enough visual flourish to fill a perfectly watchable, if hardly groundbreaking feature. Just not one that sails dangerously close to the three-hour mark, taking on water the whole time.

A central problem: This is much more the story of the veteran seaman husband of the titular wife, played recessively by Dutch actor Gijs Naber, who is apparently as passively weak-willed on...

"The Story of My Wife" is a new romantic drama, written and directed by Ildikó Enyedi, based on the 1942 novel of the same name by Milán Füst, starring Léa Seydoux, Gijs Naber, Louis Garrel, Sergio Rubini and Jasmine Trinca, now screening at Cannes:

"...naval 'Captain Jacob Storr' is in an unhappy marriage, suspecting his French wife 'Lizzy' of infidelity. It seems that Storr married Lizzie only after a friend dared him to marry the next woman who walked into the café they were sitting in..." 

Click the images to enlarge.... ...

After her last film, the quirky On Body and Soul, described as a rom-com set in an abattoir, won Berlin’s Golden Bear and picked up an Oscar nomination, Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi finally got to make her passion project.

The Story of My Wife is based on the 1946 Hungarian novel by Milán Füst, one of Enyedi’s favorites since she first read it as a teenager. Up-and-coming Dutch actor Gijs Naber stars as Jakob Störr, a no-nonsense ship’s captain who, while on land leave, agrees to a bet to marry the first woman who walks in.

Luckily for him,...

After her last film, the quirky On Body and Soul, described as a rom-com set in an abattoir, won Berlin’s Golden Bear and picked up an Oscar nomination, Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi finally got to make her passion project.

The Story of My Wife is based on the 1946 Hungarian novel by Milán Füst, one of Enyedi’s favorites since she first read it as a teenager. Up-and-coming Dutch actor Gijs Naber stars as Jakob Störr, a no-nonsense ship’s captain who, while on land leave, agrees to a bet to marry the first woman who walks in.

Luckily for him,...

"You want me to like your admirer?" Films Boutique has unveiled a festival promo trailer for The Story of My Wife, the first English-language feature from acclaimed, award-winning Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi. She won the Golden Bear top prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 2017 for her last film On Body and Soul. The Story of My Wife, adapted from Hungarian author Milán Füst's novel, is set to premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival in the Main Competition, and it runs a full 2 hours, 49 minutes. Whew. There's not of a description. Only an introduction: the film follows a Dutch sea captain who makes a bet in a café to wed the first woman who enters through the door. In walks Lizzy, played by Léa Seydoux. The cast also includes Gijs Naber and the ubiquitous Louis Garrel. This is the best of any Cannes trailer we've posted before the festival...