Peter Bradshaw: The Wife review – Glenn Close is unreadably brilliant as author's spouse plunged in late-life crisis
There’s nothing more
dangerous than a writer whose feelings have been hurt.” The speaker is Joan
Castleman, the charming, enigmatically discreet and supportive wife of
world-famous author and New York literary lion Joe Castleman. It is a
fascinating and bravura performance from Glenn Close, in this hugely enjoyable
dark comedy from director Björn Runge, adapted by Jane Anderson from the novel
by Meg Wolitzer. Perhaps it’s Close’s career-best – unnervingly subtle,
unreadably calm, simmering with self-control. Her Joan is a study in marital pain,
deceit and the sexual politics of prestige. It’s a portrayal to put alongside
Close’s appearances in Dangerous Liaisons and Fatal Attraction. This is an
unmissable movie for Glenn
Close fans. Actually, you can’t watch it without becoming a fan – if
you weren’t one already.
The Castlemans are on
the plane to Sweden, ready for Joe to get the Nobel prize. Yet they are being
pestered on the flight by a certain Nathaniel Bone, part stalker-fan, part
parasitic hack who wants Joe to cooperate with a warts-and-all biography he is
planning to write. Joe gives him the contemptuous brush-off but Joan cautiously
advises a more diplomatic treatment. It is a key moment in this hugely
enjoyable drama when things begin to fall apart.
Jonathan Pryce is
excellent as the cantankerous and conceited old writer, a man now childishly
addicted to praise and luxuriating in his colossal quasi-Bellow
reputation. Christian
Slater is the insidious and dangerous Bone. Max Irons plays Joe’s
moody son David who also has plans to be writer, desperately needing the old
man’s approval and yet prickly and resentful at Joe’s sorrowing criticisms of
his work – criticisms which do not convey any great reassurance that his son
has chosen the right career. And there is an unsettling moment in his Stockholm
hotel suite when the great man appears not to recognise the name of one of his
own characters. Is Joe succumbing to dementia?
And of course Close
plays Joan, a woman much loved and admired within Joe’s circle of acquaintance:
supportive helpmeet, mother – soon to be grandmother – and deeply affectionate
spouse, apparently happy with a life lived in the titan’s shadow. Yet everyone
is aware of a difficult truth; despite Joe blandly telling people at these
cocktail parties that his wife “doesn’t write”, Joan had her own literary
ambitions as a young woman. Joe’s moment of Nobel triumph appears to be
triggering a late-life crisis in Joan… read more:
