The Wife

Joseph Castle­man (Jonathan Pryce is the first to admit that with­out his wife Joan (Glenn Close), he nev­er would have become the tal­ent­ed and renowned writer he is today. As Björn Runge’s The Wife opens, its pro­tag­o­nist is in his six­ties, with many well-praised books under his belt. When Joseph gets a call announc­ing that he has won the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture, it’s only nat­ur­al that Joan should lis­ten in on the oth­er phone and that she should be the first per­son he thanks in his speech in Stock­holm. Whether she likes it or not.

Today’s cin­e­ma land­scape is pret­ty bar­ren when it comes to pre­sent­ing tal­ent­ed actors in the midst of deep con­ver­sa­tion. Where such scenes do exist, they tend to act as breathers between action sequences where the per­form­ers are often ghosts of them­selves, hid­den behind CGI. Runge’s film, there­fore, has the com­pet­i­tive advan­tages of a dra­mat­ic premise and a first-rate cast.

Joan muf­fles a secret which Joe pre­tends doesn’t exist, while Chris­t­ian Slater’s writer Nathaniel per­sis­tent­ly con­fronts the cou­ple, hop­ing that his upcom­ing biog­ra­phy of Joe will be even more juicy for it. This com­plex bal­let of the unspo­ken allows the cast to real­ly let rip – Slater and Close in par­tic­u­lar share some deli­cious­ly ambigu­ous moments of ten­sion, sex­u­al or oth­er­wise. Their close­ness hints at an impos­si­ble Dan­ger­ous Liaison.

Close seems to be return­ing to the arche­type of the decep­tive­ly serene woman, and although Joan is less manip­u­la­tive than her Mar­quise de Mer­teuil in Stephen Frears’ 1988 mas­ter­piece, and more col­lect­ed than bun­ny-boil­er Alex For­rest in Fatal Attrac­tion, she too refus­es to be ignored. Joe’s pres­ti­gious recog­ni­tion sparks in her a wave of rec­ol­lec­tions, trac­ing back from her first meet­ing with him when he was her teacher of cre­ative writ­ing in 1958.

Their his­to­ry is revealed to be increas­ing­ly com­plex, which saves these flash­backs from the usu­al trap­pings of cheap peri­od piece nos­tal­gia. Add the fact that the couple’s first names are so sim­i­lar and it all begins to feel like an omi­nous sign. Ambi­tion, a shared pas­sion for writ­ing, love and misog­y­ny all coa­lesce to reveal a dark­er real­i­ty that pro­gres­sive­ly colours and illu­mi­nates Close’s enig­mat­ic per­for­mance. There is more pain to this com­pas­sion­ate part­ner than meets the eye, but also more intel­li­gence and strength. This under­stand­ing of Joan as a woman who made a cal­cu­lat­ed choice rather than a vic­tim is what makes The Wife more than a sad sto­ry of male entitlement.

Nathaniel too recog­nis­es Joan as the more inter­est­ing mem­ber of the Castle­man team, and Slater, with his trade­mark seduc­tive sleaze, is per­fect­ly primed to turn this frus­trat­ed author into a more appeal­ing char­ac­ter. It is the impres­sive con­struc­tion of Jane Anderson’s script, adapt­ed from the 2003 nov­el by Meg Wolitzer, that grants each pro­tag­o­nist a sim­i­lar, slow­ly revealed com­plex­i­ty. Each new con­ver­sa­tion and revealed mem­o­ry is a lay­er uncov­ered, lead­ing up to a sat­is­fy­ing explo­sion of words.

Yet even that res­o­lu­tion hides anoth­er, cul­mi­nat­ing in a per­plex­ing twist that nev­er­the­less feels right. Life for Joan has been a suc­ces­sion of com­pro­mis­es, and whether she will keep the mem­o­ry of them all to her­self will con­tin­ue to be her choice and her choice alone. There­in lies her power.