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The Wife

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‘The Wife’ is a film based the book of the same name by Meg Wolitzer. I would be very surprised if it proved to be a smashing box office success as it is anything but light entertainment. However, it is an outstanding film, in which Glenn Close plays the central role so convincingly that many critics tip her to win an Oscar (without, I note, having to boil a pet rabbit as she did in Fatal Attraction, and for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress exactly 30 years ago).


The story line revolves around  Joan and Joe Castleman, an American couple married for almost 40 years. Very clever casting sees Glenn Close play the mature Joan Castleman, while her daughter Annie Starke, perhaps not surprisingly, is very convincing as the younger Joan Castleman.

What begins as the story of Joe Castleman (played by Jonathan Pryce) a prolific and acclaimed writer being informed that he is to be awarded a Nobel Prize, becomes an unravelling of what lies beneath the seemingly successful and supportive veneer of the Castlemans. Seemlessly inserted flashbacks show the basis of a hidden relationship that we later discover existef for much of their working lives.

When the family attends the conferral of Joe’s Nobel Prize in Literature, in Stockholm Sweden, we  learn that their adult son David (played by Max Irons), who is also a writer, is deeply affected by his father’s put-downs, criticisms of his writing, and unwillingness to offer any affirmation.

We learn that while Joe is almost totally dependent on Joan, he is a compulsive ‘womaniser’.  While Joe is an arrogant and vain man who seems to bask in his own fame, Joan appears content to employ her diplomatic and elegant intellect in her role of king maker. Joan who seems to have long put up with this arrangement reaches her breaking point in Stockholm. Prompted by the incessant pestering and meddling of Nathaniel Bone (played by Christian Slater), a writer determined to write a ‘warts and all’ biography of Joe, family arrangements are reassessed, and family secrets are exposed with drastic effect.


This is a demanding and troubling film that richly rewards the effort.
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