Review by © Jane Freebury
She warns her husband there are crumbs in
his beard, reminds him to take his medication, and is diplomatic towards
intrusive journalists. Joe Castleman, played with ease by Jonathan Pryce, is a
famous writer and as such he is allowed to be distracted from minor chores, besides
his wife is a woman who has made a career out of smoothing his way.
Castleman is on the point of being awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature. He will travel to Stockholm with wife Joan
(Glenn Close) and son David (Max Irons) who is also a writer and has just had
his first book published.
The film is specific about the year in
which it is set. It is a quarter of a century ago. A long or a short time in
feminism, depending on your perspective. There weren’t many young fathers to be
seen pushing strollers through the streets back then.
The
Wife is based on a recent novel but it is such a
throwback to the 1950s that the filmmakers at least had the sense to put a
woman like Glenn Close in the role. She makes this odd material work.
There is no doubt about the strength that
Close brings to her characters on screen. Especially since the jilted lover in Fatal Attraction in 1987, she has brought extra flintiness to her roles
like the leader of a prison camp choir in Paradise
Road, as Hamlet’s mother 1990 and as the
evil Cruella in 101 Dalmatians.
Working against type, Close finds herself
here in the role of a wifely wife who has spent a lifetime nurturing her
husband’s career, ostensibly doing the editing. In flashbacks to her younger
self, as student and new wife to the ambitious young professor of creative
writing, Joan is played by Close’s own daughter, Annie Stark.
Like Starke, young Max Irons, son of
Jeremy, must have a take of his own on being the son of a famous actor.
From early in her marriage, Joan has learned
to look the other way during Joe’s affairs. In Stockholm the aging lothario is
at it yet again, with an attractive young minder.
The thing is, the film tries to convince us,
that Joan is both doormat and
indispensable to Joe’s career. The circumstances beggar belief. A nosy journalist,
Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater), suspects the truth and wants to write
Castleman’s biography, but he keeps getting the brush off, from both Joe and
Joan.
The pact between this husband and wife is
implausible, impossible to believe, and certainly doesn’t reflect the choices
contemporary women are likely to make. It is inconceivable that a
self-respecting woman would do what Joan has done, and yet Close gives it all
she’s got, in a battened down, nuanced way, and it is this that makes The Wife
worth watching.
3 Stars
Screening at Dendy Canberra Centre, Palace
Electric, New Acton, and Capitol Cinema, Manuka
Also published at Jane's blog