Hungarian director and local favorite, Ildikó Enyedi, is no stranger to the Cannes Film Festival. She is a one-time winner of the Golden Camera award for her 1989 feature film debut My 20th Century. Now, after a productive lockdown, Enyedi is in the running for the Palme d’Or with her latest film, The Story Of My Wife, which is set to have its world premiere in competition at the 74th Cannes Film Festival.

Enyedi’s previous film, 2017’s On Body And Soul, was an international critical success, winning the coveted Golden Bear, the Berlin International Film Festival’s main prize, and was also a Best Foreign Language Film nomination at that year’s Oscars. The film continues to enjoy a long life on Netflix, and has introduced a new generation of viewers to her work.

Her latest, The Story Of My Wife, is an adaptation of the 1942 novel of the same name by Hungarian writer Milán Füst. Following is the official synopsis from the Cannes press material: Jacob Störr, a sea captain, makes a bet in a café with a friend to marry the first woman who enters the place. And in walks Lizzy.

Enyedi disclosed that the book was one of her childhood favorites.  In a lengthy, recent interview, she told The Hollywood Reporter about her fascination with the book: “The Story of My Wife: The Reminiscences of Captain Storr is a very well-known book. It is quite famous in Hungary and also internationally. It was translated into many languages, but somehow it is not a hit, an easy read.

And it has been quite misunderstood. It’s praised, in my opinion, for the wrong things. It is beautifully written, so everyone praises it for how it is written. Or they just consider the plot of the story – which is very colorful, very lush, very rich and meandering, a One Thousand and One Nights story, and also a passionate love story.

But this writer who was, by the way, a Jewish writer, wrote this book during the Second World War in Budapest when his own life was in danger. The essence of the book, for this guy, sitting in Budapest when the bombs are falling outside as he works on this, is not the love story. It’s about this search of how to live our life, our tiny, very fragile life. And he says, in more than 400 pages, that trying to control our lives, to have control, is the wrong approach. That you have to accept and appreciate that you cannot control life. That life is more elusive, more secretive.”

Up against a diverse selection for the main prize, with Spike Lee as this year’s jury president, nobody can predict how Story of My Wife will fare, but no doubt everybody will agree that a ‘live’ Cannes is something to celebrate, as is Enyedi’s retrun to directing. Below find the English language trailer to Story of My Wife.

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