The Wife (Glenn Close)

(Amazon UK link)

I hadn’t heard of the film ‘The Wife’ until I spotted it on my husband’s wishlist earlier in the year. It looked good, so I ordered it for his recent birthday, and we watched it last night. I had no idea what to expect, but was quickly engrossed in the story.

Having said that, the opening scene almost put me off entirely. Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) is a bearded writer, apparently in his 60s, though he looks older. He’s woken up in the night and is eating in the bedroom. He then gets into bed with his wife Joan (Glenn Close) and there’s an implied scene of intimacy. Nothing is shown explicitly, but plenty is implied. Not at all a good way to start a film, although it does set the scene and atmosphere pretty well. 

It quickly improves. The couple are awakened - probably in the same night, though that isn’t clear - by a phone call. It’s someone from Sweden, telling Joe that he has won the Nobel Prize for literature. He thinks it might be a scam at first, but it’s entirely real. Before long he, Joan and their adult son David are on their way to Stockholm for the ceremony.

It quickly becomes clear that Joe is not a likeable person. He’s a philanderer, and he shows little interest in his son, who is also a writer. The two keep clashing, while Joan attempts to keep the peace. To add to the impression of Joe as a rather selfish person, there are flashbacks to the late 1950s when he is a ‘professor’ (what we would call a lecturer in the UK) at an Ivy League university; the young, star-struck Joan (Annie Starke) is one of his students. Harry Lloyd, who plays the young Joe, comes across as egotistical and sexist. He’s married, and has a baby daughter; yet he encourages Joan as she falls in love with him, and the two start an affair.

The main part of the story is set in the 1990s when the couple have been married for thirty years and Joe has produced a vast number of novels. He appears to be unfailingly generous in the way he thanks his wife for looking after him, and insists that she is the love of his life. And yet this continual praise falls rather flat, partly due to his known infidelities over the years, and partly because it somehow doesn’t ring true. Joan evidently doesn’t like it, and it’s not that she’s a shy, retiring kind of person. She is elegant, supportive, and mostly very loving…

It’s a study in character, and also revealing about attitudes. I hadn’t realised that, even in the late 1950s, it was difficult for women to be published. Those early scenes are very well done, contrasting with the later ones. Of course even the modern ones seem a bit dated; the cars are old-fashioned, and people still used telephones with wires rather than mobile phones. But for those touches, however, the story could almost have been current.

And while Jonathan Pryce is good, and Max Irons as the moody, often angry David is also good, it’s Glenn Close, as the eponymous wife, who steals the show. She’s elegant, organised and a peacekeeper, staying with a rather unlikeable husband. At least, until things come to a head in Stockholm. I believed in her, totally. The actress was 70 when this film was made, but looks no more than about 50.

Christian Slater deserves a mention too, playing the rather sleazy Nathanial. He is a reporter who wants to write Joe’s biography, and who keeps trying to get snippets of juicy information. I didn’t trust him, but even he has a likeable side. And he’s the catalyst for some high drama and revelations towards the end.

There’s some mild humour in the film. We smiled a few times, and it was good to have a little light-heartedness in what was overall a surprisingly intense and moving story.

Brilliantly made, other than that rather trite opening scene. My only minor gripe is the immense amount of ‘strong’ language, which is what has raised the rating of this to 15 in the UK, R in the stricter ratings of the United States. An occasional instance in context is understandable, but it seems excessive in this film. The story is unlikely to be of interest to children or younger teens anyway.

Very highly recommended.

There's a 'making of...' extra on the DVD edition we have, with some short interviews and snippets with various actors and production staff. Reasonably interesting, but nothing special.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews