Glenn Close is masterful in The Wife
Picture this: you have a partner who is a writer. One day, she or he receives a shock phone call from Stockholm, with news of winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. Your whole family is ecstatic. Friends are delighted. Well-wishers and journalists shower your partner with praise. Everyone seems to want to take part in the celebrations. Except you: mixed feelings begin to gnaw at you, because you know that you’ve been severely exploited on your partner’s rise to the top.
This is the premise behind Björn Runge’s new film The Wife, based on the 2003 Meg Wolitzer novel of the same name. The film centres on Joan Castleman (played by Glenn Close) as she travels with her husband Joe (Jonathan Pryce) to Stockholm to receive his accolade. The couple is joined by son David (Max Irons), an aspiring writer whose relationship with his father is strained.
Joan’s conflicted emotions are evoked masterfully by Glenn Close. Through a nuanced performance – that is actually, at particular moments, too subtle – we really come to know the patient and long-suffering spouse of the feted novelist. The tension at the heart of the couple’s relationship is not hard to guess, and their long-kept secret becomes obvious well before it is revealed towards the end of the film. However, Close’s performance leaves us wanting to see how her character’s building resentment will come to a head, and to understand exactly why she agreed to be exploited the way she had been for years. In this respect, in the flashback scenes, Annie Starke is excellent as the young Joan, as is Harry Lloyd as the young Joe.
The film’s release comes at an interesting time, given the scandal surrounding this year’s cancellation of the Nobel Prize in Literature following the alleged sexual assault scandal in the Swedish Academy (the body that oversees the prize). Although the film premiered in September (2017), Sony Pictures decided to withhold the release until now. The reason for the delay, some commentators have argued, is to give the film (and particularly Close) a better shot at the 2019 Oscars. (There may well be other reasons for the timing; we can only speculate.)
Either way, The Wife is not a #MeToo film. While it highlights the mistreatment of women, and especially their marginalisation in the literary world, it leaves its central character treated unjustly right up until the end. The film’s final minutes hint at empowerment for Joan, but that is all they do: hint. Many viewers will likely be left disappointed with this ending, as well as the missed opportunity to have made a stronger statement in this area. However, the film is vindicated by the time in which it is set: 1992. This was, of course, long before digital media campaigns and the rise of global movements against assault and sexual harassment that placed these issues squarely into everyday conversations.
In this respect, the film very faithfully recreates the start of that decade. Signs of those times abound: flights on Concorde planes, photography using film cameras, and smoking in public places, among other things. It also recreates the Nobel festivities in stunning detail. We are given the chance to witness the lavish Nobel Banquet and prize-giving ceremony up close, as well as see what happens behind the scenes in meet-and-greet sessions and the rehearsal for the ceremony. That said, one or two Nobel-related elements are out of sync for the sake of the narrative, like the official photographer only taking Joe’s photographs (and ignoring the other laureates). These are minor issues, though.
A simple premise made multi-layered, The Wife provides a rich portrait of personal and social injustice. Glenn Close’s skilful performance, in particular, makes that injustice all the more real, and all the more devastating.
