Scenes from a literary marriage

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This article was published 28/09/2018 (2943 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Perhaps no one does patrician elegance that morphs into rage as well as Glenn Close.

In The Wife, however, that rage is a different animal than the bunny-boiling vitriol of Fatal Attraction’s Alex Forrest or the icy anger of Damages’ Patty Hewes. As Joan Castleman, Close’s rage is a long-simmering thing that bubbles almost imperceptibly below the surface, tamped down by a lifetime of devotion to a famous husband.

Swedish director Bjorn Runge’s adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s novel, from a script by Jane Anderson (Olive Kitteridge), is engaging largely as a showcase for Close — not just for her rage, but for her range.

As the patient, supportive wife of a celebrated novelist, whether she’s elated or anguished, Close’s face is riveting; you’ll almost want to watch the film again once it’s over to reassess her emotions.

As The Wife opens, it’s 1992, and Joan is trying to sleep as her husband Joe (Jonathan Pryce) is climbing the walls, waiting for a phone call. When the call finally comes, it’s good, if expected, news: Joe has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The couple and their grown son, aspiring novelist David (Max Irons, son of Jeremy), head off for the ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, where the wintry landscape seems to inject a chill into their relationship.

As Joe is fêted and fussed over, Joan, holding his coat like an assistant, is told “the wives” — and they are all wives, of course — will be taken shopping and offered spa treatments. It does not escape her gimlet eye that the beautiful official Nobel photographer, Linnea (Karin Franz Korlof), has not escaped her husband’s roving eye.

Another unwelcome presence is freelance writer Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater), who has been angling to write Joe’s biography; he’s transparent in his attempts to win Joan’s favour so she’ll confirm some juicy details for him.

His probing into their life inspires some well-placed flashbacks, to when young Joan — played in a beautiful bit of casting by Close’s own daughter, Annie Starke — was a promising young writer at Smith College in the ’50s. She revels in praise for her stories from her passionate but married professor, one Joe Castleman (Harry Lloyd), and we see the roots of their symbiotic relationship take hold.

Pryce does a lot with a role that’s written as a bit of a stereotype. A Philip Roth figure, Joe is a philanderer and a blowhard, but his false humility masks an insecurity we sense is real.

It’s a tricky line to walk, but in Pryce’s hands, Joe’s calculated charm — the tweedy, beardy Great American Novelist — isn’t entirely insufferable. Adopting a faint Brooklyn accent that gets stronger when he’s playing up his working-class Jewish background, the Welsh-born actor captures a man convinced of his greatness who nonetheless needs constant reminders of it.

But it’s Close who’s the unmitigated star here. “Don’t paint me as the long-suffering wife,” she tells Nathaniel. “I’m more interesting than that.”

She is, of course, but the mechanics of her marriage are equally interesting. Suffer she might, but no one can accuse Joe of being ungrateful. At every turn, he’s at pains to laud her, not as his better half, but an equal partner, but his deference just seems to stoke her anger.

He’s the cliché of a genius author, needy and distracted; she’s the cliché of the devoted wife, keeping track of his glasses and his pills and his appointments. But as the film unfolds, it seems those are clichés of necessity, roles the couple have perfected — until their masks begin slip.

The Wife doesn’t deliver the shocking blow it ought to — Runge doesn’t build suspense as effectively as he could — but when Joan erupts, it’s a sight to behold.

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @dedaumier