Movie Review: "The Wife"

"The Wife": C.  When Sony Pictures distributed The Wife it chose a promotional campaign focusing on the acting talents of Glenn Close who plays the title character, Joan Castleman.  Most of the national reviewers, some of whom rarely have a discouraging word about any film whatsoever, followed along a similar vein, emphasizing the work of Close and writing relatively little about the story itself.  After having seen the picture in question, I can see why.  The film is a slogging dud, and the only reason to fork over your admission fee is to ascertain whether the veteran actress deserves the Oscar nomination she is likely to receive.

The plot involves a married couple, Joan and her husband Joe (Jonathan Pryce), who first meet illicitly when she is a student at Smith College and he is her married writing professor.  From their earliest years together she has served first as his editor and eventually as his secret ghost writer.  If not for Joan, it's likely Joe would have never been able to get his first novel, The Walnut, or for that matter any of his subsequent offerings, published.

Joe is a philanderer, a chauvinist, a phony and an unsupportive father, yet Jane, a bright woman, sticks with him.  We learn both from flashbacks and the present narration that he owes every bit of his success to her.  But her help goes beyond what is ethically acceptable; she is the person actually doing the writing for which he is accepting all the credit, even going so far as to tell the press that his wife does not write.  Jane seethes covertly, but when her husband wins the Nobel Prize for literature, things between them come to a boil.

There are several things wrong with this film, the most important being that lack of a surprise element.  I got the feeling that the filmmakers' plan was to stun the viewers with a late revelation that the real writer whose books were universally acclaimed was Jane, not Joe.  The problem with that plan is that anyone who saw the trailer for The Wife already knew going in that Jane was the one penning the stories.  (By the way, the trailer played in theaters and on television for weeks before its Twin Cities release on August 31.)  Even if you never saw the trailer, the cat is let out of the bag with the very first flashback to Jane's days in the sixties as a serious and potentially great writer at Smith.  The part of young Jane is played by Close's real life daughter, Annie Starke.

A second fault with the film is its dearth of realistic, interesting side characters.  Christian Slater plays Nathaniel, a non-fiction writer who practically stalks the Castlemans with the goal of writing an authorized (or, failing that, an unauthorized) biography about Joe.  He knows his preys' secret and tries to get an admission from Jane.  Slater comes across as a weasel.  Max Irons, the real life son of actor Jeremy Irons, plays the Castlemans' son David.  I am going to give Irons the benefit of a doubt and conclude that it was a weak script, not his acting, which made me wish his character had been left on the cutting room floor.

Finally, screenwriter Jane Anderson, adapting an original work by Meg Wolitzer, gets a thumbs down.  Besides the miscalculation on the audience's ability to unravel "the secret" before the half-way point, the script has many sections which deserve criticism.  The low point is a scene in the Castlemans' Stockholm hotel room where Joe, who had minutes earlier failed in his seduction attempt with a beautiful young photographer, Linnea (Karin Franz Korlof), accuses Jane of deserting him, even though it is 4:00 in the afternoon!  The dialogue imposed upon the actors here is anything but sharp, and who could not have correctly predicted that the walnut -- yes, the walnut!-- on which Joe had inscribed a sentiment to Linnea was going to be uncovered by Jane while grappling with Joe?

Seventy-one year old Close is thought of by many in connection with her contemporary Meryl Streep, who is two years younger.  Close's film career began in 1982 with The World According To Garp, and she has had very steady work ever since.  Streep got her first break with 1977's Julia, and is one of the most highly acclaimed film actresses of all time.  Streep has been nominated for twenty-one Academy Awards, winning once for Best Supporting Actress and twice for Best Actress.  Close has been nominated six times, three in each of the two aforementioned categories, but has not caught the brass ring.  It would not come as a shock if Close is not only nominated for her work in The Wife but also, as a sentimental acknowledgement for a solid and long career, is sent home with the gold statuette.