As I watched the 1973 film A Doll's House, based on Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play and directed by Joseph Losey, starring Jane Fonda and David Warner, I saw many similarities between this film and the film Enough, directed by Michael Apted in 2002 and starring Jennifer Lopez.
Both of these films have storylines that involve women faced with having to make a decision to leave their husbands and to stand up for their own rights. In the film A Doll's House, Jane Fonda's Nora is a wife whose husband, Torvald, treats her more like a doll and would talk to her in condescending ways, for example calling her "my little twit mouse." He has always expected Nora to do everything that he has asked of her, and she has been given no freedom in making her own decisions. It is very obvious that Nora had become uncomfortable with her living situation and has been too scared to tell him her secret of borrowing money, while forging her dead father's signature, in order to pay for a trip to Italy to save her husband's life. In the end of this play and film Nora finds the courage to tell her husband that she is leaving him and decides to go her own way in life.
In the film Enough, Slim, played by Jennifer Lopez, lives in an environment very much like the one portrayed in A Doll's House. In this film Slim ends up marrying an abusive and psychopath man named Mitch, depicted by Billy Campbell. Mitch is very condescending towards Slim and treats her with great disrespect. Mitch is a very creepy character, and from the very beginning the viewer could see that Slim should not have married him. After Slim confronts her husband that she believes he is cheating on her, he tells her that he is the man and it is his right to do whatever he pleases. Because Mitch makes all of the money, he takes it upon himself to physically and mentally abuse Slim whenever he wants. Slim is not happy with this but unfortunately feels that she has no way out because she has no money and nowhere to turn. Eventually, though, she becomes sick of the beatings.
Thus, in fear for the safety of her and her daughter's life, with some money from her father and with the help of her friends, she escapes from her husband. Throughout the movie she has to constantly live in fear because her husband is trying to track her down and kill her. She uses her father's money to move far away where she buys a home and receives training in martial arts. At the end of the movie in order to protect her and her daughter, she devises an elaborate plan to kill her husband; and in one last battle with him she ends up killing him.
I really enjoyed both of these films, and I thought it was very interesting to see the correlation between these two storylines. I found the environments that the two women had to live in unfair and their treatment undeserved. I thought that both of the films portrayed a positive message of standing up for oneself and being strong. Both women showed great strength, and I feel that they both made the right decisions. Overall the films were interesting, but most importantly they taught us that enough is enough and to always stand up for what is right.