The Wife (2018, R)

Let me get this out of the way immediately:  I loved this movie.  I got it as a DVD rental from Netflix, and I thought the story was just extraordinary.  I was drawn in the whole time, the performances are wonderful (Glenn Close, obviously, but everyone else is also great,) and I’m still turning it over in my head.

For nearly 40 years, Joan has been “the woman behind the man,” the wife of celebrated literary genius Joe.  When Joe wins the Nobel Prize for literature, he and Joan (and their adult son David) fly to Stockholm together for the ceremony, and over the course of several days – filled with fawning functions, Joe’s charm-the-room anecdoctes, and Joan being the wife on Joe’s arm to be trotted out for introductions – the fundamental condition of their relationship and Joe’s career comes to a boiling point. 

Really fascinating.  I’ve never read the book this film is based on, never even heard of it before seeing this movie, but now I really want to read it.  The way the lives of the characters are revealed gradually, between the present-day scenes and a series of flashbacks from early in Joe and Joan’s relationship, is done so deftly.  There’s a whole ecosystem of complicated emotion tangled up within this family, and I love digging through it.  The story takes us in interesting directions, some of which I didn’t see coming.

As I was watching Close’s excellent performance as Joan in this movie, a certain phrase came to mind, “life of quiet desperation,” and as I thought it, it occurred to me that the vast majority of fictional characters who make me think of this phrase are female.  Interesting, when the full quote from Henry David Thoreau refers to “the mass of men.”  But there’s something in that phrase that resonates so strongly in me with a number of female characters, the ones who’ve always occupied the places they’re “supposed to,” following the rules but finding that it brings them no contentment or fulfillment, no security, no promised reward for the dutiful wife and devoted mother.

Joan fits into this space for me, but in a way that I don’t often see.  The restlessness is there, and the discontentment.  You see it in the way Joan makes eye contact with another “wife” in the room as a group of Nobel winners are rubbing elbows together, in her posture every time Joe beckons her from across the room to be presented to another Someone Important.  But she’s at the same time so composed, so pragmatic, so without rancor.  Multiple times during the film, someone offers her the bait and she doesn’t take it.  She’s like a Cheshire cat of repressed female rage, smiling and demurring whenever anyone tries to get her to acknowledge the bullshit that’s clearly all around her, that she herself fully recognizes (give her a little credit, thank you very much) but refuses to give voice to.  Again, my go-to word is “fascinating.”

Undoubtedly, it’s 100% Close’s show, and I see why she’s the one who’s pulled ahead in the Lead Actress race (side note:  while I’m guessing she’s got the award in the bag at this point, this is another film where I wish it was even more recognized than that very well-deserved nomination.)  But as I said, the other actors do fine work as well.  Jonathan Pryce is pitch-perfect as Joe, by which I mean infuriating in such an insidious way, and Christian Slater is just the right amount of thirsty as a would-be biographer sniffing around the family.  Downton Abbey’s Elizabeth McGovern does a nice job in a small role, and special shoutout to Annie Starke (a new face for me) and Harry Lloyd (Son of Mine or Herbert Pocket, take your pick) as the younger versions of Joan and Joe.  The flashbacks are so excellently used and tell so much about these two and what their relationship is.

Warnings

Language, brief sexual content, drinking/smoking, and brief drug references.