The Wife

Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Director: Björn Runge

Quick Impressions:
Isn’t September supposed to be a slow month for movies? What is going on here? For days, I agonized over which movie to see this week, A Simple Favor (a thriller by Paul Feig????) or White Boy Rick (which wins most infectious trailer of the summer, hands down). Then I discovered that The Wife was playing near me, and it was all over.

Glenn Close has been nominated for an Academy Award six times with zero wins, and this is supposed to be her Oscar. Everybody has been talking about Close’s riveting star turn in The Wife all year (actually since last year). Not only is the performance itself deserving, but the narrative is there. That’s what everybody is saying, and it all checks out. Six nominations, zero wins, impressive forty-year body of work. Of course, I personally can think of an equally compelling alternate narrative in which Close loses Best Actress to Cher in 1988, then thirty years later loses again to Lady Gaga. (The ceremonies would be thirty-one years apart, but The Wife was first screened at the Toronto film festival in 2017, thirty years after both Moonstruck and Fatal Attraction debuted in 1987.)  But no matter what happens, if you’re interested in the Oscars, then you need to see The Wife because Glenn Close is the one to beat for Best Actress this year.

And who doesn’t love Glenn Close? She has such a gift for elevating material. (If you don’t know what I mean, check out Disney’s live action 101 Dalmatians. My kids just watched it again recently. The entire cast is actually quite engaging, but Close’s deliciously wicked turn as Cruella DeVil makes that movie so much better than it ought to be. Seriously, her performance is a joy to watch. As interpreted by Close, not only is Cruella supremely entertaining, but she also makes surprising sense.)

Close has a gift for choosing material that makes you think, too. No character she plays is ever less than fascinating, and that is certainly not true of every actor, talent notwithstanding. 

An additional perk of watching The Wife is that we get to see a younger version of Close’s character Joan Castleman played by the actress’s own daughter Annie Starke. That would make a Best Actress win for Close even more special. (My husband and I couldn’t stop joking about this in the car on the way home. “Watch,” he said, “her daughter will win the Oscar instead.” Then we decided it would be even funnier if Close lost, then someone made a biopic about her starring Meryl Streep, who, of course, would win Best Actress for her moving portrayal of her oft-thwarted friend.)

The Good:
I’ve said that Close has a gift for elevating material, but The Wife is actually already quite strong. It’s a surprisingly compelling story, told in an unexpected, highly effective way. Close’s performance is magnificent, but The Wife is a well crafted showcase for the talents of its star.  Since the plot centers on a former English professor winning the Nobel Prize for literature, I’ll just jam in a ham-fisted version of a classic metaphor here and call Close’s performance the jewel and The Wife the foil that sets it off.

Honestly the story is far more compelling than I expected. The theatrical trailer gives nothing away. This is a well written piece of fiction about writing fiction well. What impressed me particularly is that the story actually has a surprisingly intricate plot, and yet it is presented in such a character driven way. There’s a metadramatic elegance to this setup that makes me want to heap praise on screenwriter Jane Anderson. Perhaps I should read Meg Wolitzer’s novel. There’s this wonderful tactic of bait and switch that the film uses so effectively. We assume we’re getting a character study, and we are, but we’re also getting quite a story. I can’t praise the film with the specificity I’d like because I don’t want to give anything away.

This is the kind of movie you need to watch twice. And I’d suspect that on subsequent viewings of the movie, Close’s performance only gets better and better. So much of her performance is in her unverbalized expressions. We have to read her silences correctly, and that’s not truly possible until we know more about her story.

In every scene, her acting is unobtrusively fabulous, so she does, without question deserve to win that Oscar. (Whether she will, of course, is another story. In most years, all of the nominated performances are deserving.)

But Close is not the only one giving a top notch performance here. I’m surprised more people are not raving about what a fantastic part this is for Christian Slater (or maybe they are. I never read actual reviews until I’ve written my own).

Slater is amazing in this film, though. He’s the real surprise, as far as I’m concerned.  We always expect Close to give a great performance.  Possibly I’ve missed something, but as far as I’m concerned, this is the best movie role Slater has had for a long, long time. It’s like a career resurgence for him. (And now I kind of want to watch Interview with the Vampire again. Slater’s really good at tricky interviews.)

Also quite good here is Jonathan Pryce as the husband (and recent Nobel Laureate) Joe Castleman. I kept making little G.I. Joe related jokes to myself (which turned out to be shockingly on the nose as I learned more of the plot), but it’s not Jonathan Pryce’s fault I always associate him with his role in the corny G.I. Joe movies that my kids enjoy. He’s had quite the storied career himself, and his work here makes Joe Castleman bafflingly sympathetic. (Every aspect of this film surprises me apparently.  The word and its synonyms are all over this review.  I can’t help it.)  No wonder Joan can’t sort out her emotions after decades of marriage to this man. I’m confused about my feelings toward him after just a couple of hours. He’s an almost piteous figure, at times even likable, yet simultaneously despicable. Pryce does a great job of bringing out endearing vulnerability in the frustrating character.  His Joe Castleman is so much more than an addled old man fumblingly handing out walnuts and quoting James Joyce.  Or maybe he’s not.  (I probably need to reread “The Dead” before watching the film a second time.  The allusions are not subtle, but I’ll bet there’s more there than I caught.)

I also really, really liked Annie Starke as young Joan. (She looks so much like her mother!) I’ve never seen her in anything before, but she’s a fairly commanding screen presence. Watch out, Mamie Gummer!

Elizabeth Govern is also immensely captivating in a small but key role.

Best Scene:
Christian Slater does his best to steal the movie. He can’t do it, of course. The movie belongs to Glenn Close, no question. But Slater definitely infuses the story with so much energy.

I love his character, Nathaniel Bone, the shifty biographer. (Biographers are by their nature shifty. I really wish I were well known enough to demand privacy. Wouldn’t it give you a swelling of pride to have secrets that people would make a career of discovering?)

The scenes between Close and Slater are electrifying. The two of them have unexpectedly amazing chemistry onscreen. The moments they share just sizzle and crackle with energy.

Best of everything in the movie, I love their conversation in the bar in Stockholm. Suddenly I realized, “Wait, I have really been underestimating this movie–and both of these characters!” It’s great.

My husband’s favorite scene involved a comment late in the film by the couple’s son, David (Max Irons), who references something said earlier and puts it in a whole different light. That’s a good moment, too.

Best Scene Visually:
Glenn Close’s face during her husband’s final speech at the dinner banquet should be framed and installed as a museum exhibit. (They could put it right next to Tilda Swinton lying in that box.) I would be happy if I could convey even one of the twenty million different emotions that come blasting out of her face during this scene. (Not surprisingly, I have been nominated for zero Oscars. Honestly, I’m not even this emotionally articulate in real life.)

I was also intrigued by all of the aerial shots of Stockholm. I wasn’t sure if the snow covered streets were supposed to remind us of James Joyce’s “The Dead.” We certainly get a nice, heavy-handed nod to that story in Joan’s final scene with Joe.

Best Action Sequence:
Does writing a misspelled name on a walnut count as an action? I found Pryce’s work in that awkward scene with Linnea incredibly charming. Maybe “charming” is the wrong word there, but I found I pitied an old man undone by self-loathing and confusion and his own wrist watch.

Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Glenn Close:
Close is good in every scene but her last big moment with Pryce is so difficult and so well played.  In general, though, I find her almost eerie level of self control just as impressive as her emotional outbursts and facial contortions.  Watching her, I kept thinking, “My God, it is so difficult to stand around in unrumpled clothing and uncomfortable shoes with perfect posture and complete composure, making eye contact and casual chit chat with a neverending parade of strangers, some with masked agendas that pose a social threat!”  Her final words to Nathaniel are magnificently delivered.  I so admire her eerie composure. She’s like a smiling velociraptor. 

The Negatives:
I have nothing bad to say about this movie.

The beginning seems slow–until you get halfway through and discover you’ve been discounting valuable information. Then you realize that it’s not the movie that’s slow, it’s you.

Glenn Close often plays women who do astonishing things and live outside the box. In this film, her Joan Castleman does something that I would never, ever, ever do. Never! (I would die alone under a bridge first.  I just couldn’t do it.)  But I must admit, there’s a dark genius to it all.

The Wife leaves me with a lot of unanswered questions about Joan and her relationship with Joe, but I suspect she might not know the answers to those questions herself, so I can’t fault the movie for deliberately engendering my feelings of baffled frustration.

More than anything, the movie leaves me wishing I could read Christian Slater’s book.  (I wish there were a tie-in movie-stunt version of his unauthorized biography somewhere on the internet.)

I do think the two Castleman children could have been given more (or less) development. The son seems a bit…lacking. But I guess he is still finding his voice for most of the movie.

If you don’t like character driven pieces that focus on women or you refuse to take protagonists seriously if they’re over a certain age, then this movie is not for you.

Overall:
When I was nine, my parents naively let me watch the movie Fatal Attraction, then a new release on home video. (It was how I learned the meaning of the word “fatal.”  Up to that point, guessing from context, I had mistakenly believed the word meant “slight.”  After the movie, I turned to my parents and yelled, “They need to rename that Really, Really Strong Attraction!”)  Glenn Close certainly made a really, really, strong and lasting impression with her complex and terrifying turn as Alex Forrest.