Talk:A Perfect Enemy

Plot Misrepresented

The written plot has almost no connection to the movie I just watched, though it has a little more in common with the description of Amélie Nothomb's novel The Enemy's Cosmetique.

Jeremiasz Angust is on a speaking tour in Paris when he meets a young woman who introduces herself as Texel Textor from Holland. At first Angust is annoyed by Texel, who insists on talking to him, despite cues that Angust is not interested in talking. Eventually Angust becomes drawn into the conversation. Texel begins telling a story about her childhood, in which Texel was around 10 years old lived with his mother and her stepdad “Fatso" and one of her jobs was to mix the cat food and serve it to the cats. He hated the job, as the fish and rice concoction always nauseated her and she had to close his eyes while she mixed it. One day however, she forced herself to eat it, and found it so appealing that he ravenously ate all of the cat food himself while the cats looked on. Angust is frustrated to be bothered but engaged with the stories. Texel tells another story from his childhood whereas she believes she "murdered" one of her classmates. Texel explains that as a child she had always been envious of the girl who was more popular and better off, and so one night she prayed that her friend would die. The next morning it was revealed that she had died unexpectedly during the night of cardiac arrest. Angust is suspicious of the woman’s motives and her provocative attitude towards him. Despite her denial, Angust confirms she was at the talk he gave. Texel asks Angust about his wife. It becomes clear that Angust used to be married, but his wife has disappeared over 20 years earlier. Texel begins telling another story, about the only woman she ever loved. She observed her in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris and was immediately struck by her beauty and resemblance to a certain statue in the graveyard. Texel spoke to the woman and was rejected, and retaliated by assaulting her in the graveyard but the woman escapes when Texel is distracted and laughing loudly. After the encounter, Texel searched Paris obsessively for the woman and finally found her again, two years later in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. Not recognizing her as the attacker, the woman assumed Texel was a friend of her husband's and kindly invited her back to her home for tea. Partway through the tea, the woman recognizes Texel by her laugh. She demands she leave immediately but Texel tells her that that was why he had come - firstly to learn her name, and secondly to allow her to finally avenge herself for the attack by killing her. She takes a knife and holds it out to the woman, inviting her to kill her. When the woman refuses, Texel stabs her in the stomach instead, killing her. She discovers the woman's name - Isabelle. Angust becomes agitated as that is the name of his missing wife. He becomes violent with Texel over her persistence and ominously threatening attitude. He leaves and boards his airplane back to Poland. He freaks out and escapes the plane and goes back to the terminal to confront Texel again. He begins to tell her the story of the falling in and falling out of love he and his wife. After 4 years of marriage and a brief separation, he is at their apartment to reconcile where he discovers a oneway ticket to Holland that she had bought and a positive pregnancy test. He is deeply hurt. The movie becomes completely surrealistic as Angust and Texel begin to move across time and space from airport to airplane. When Texel calls out to the airline attendants, they cannot hear her. She describes the scenario where he was the one who had assaulted Isabelle, and he was the one who later stabbed and killed her, disposing of her body in the concrete of the building of the very airport they where now in. She seems to be Angust's "inner enemy" that she was talking about before - his inner conscience. In an airplane bathroom they wrestle in a pit of wet concrete where Texel ‘drowns” Angust before they reverse and he kills her. He goes back to his seat and the movie ends.68.162.69.176 (talk) 04:29, 25 August 2024 (UTC)