I’ve never read Meg Wolitzer’s novel, The Wife, but it’s adaptation is one of those films that seems like it’s a much better book. The film stars Glenn Close as Jane Castleman, the supportive wife of Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), a best-selling author who has just learned he is to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Joe’s reverence for his wife is loud and frequently-stated, but still Joan is wearied by decades of rangling his ego. The Wife is a good movie in that it seems exclusively like a showcase film for the legendary Close, and she delivers the kind of work worthy of that kind of showcase. Jane’s simmering bitterness, her constant state of damage control and putting on airs has left her with very little left, and Close translates these frustrations with a captivatingly assured performance.

Pryce – also in a role perfect for him – gives Close a good sparring partner, and that The Wife feels the need to meander toward subplots concerning flashbacks to when Jean and Joe met (he was a professor, she was his student) and another involving a pesky journalist (Christian Slater) interested in writing an exposé on Joe – and possibly about Jane as well – is tiresome. These plot lines make suggestions about Jane’s larger-than-expected place in Joe’s literary life, suggestions that already feel apparent within their tension. You come to a movie like The Wife for the arguments, the Virginia Woolf style chess matches between husband and wife. The Wife delivers this, though sometimes begrudgingly. It’s possible that Close could get an Oscar nomination for this part. The 71-year-old actress is a living legend, who has made a specialty of playing seductive, dangerous women with effortless confidence. The Wife is far from her best, but still a strong testament to all she’s capable of.

 

Directed by Björn Runge