English film club

"The wife" (2017)

99 minutes
Directed by Björn Runge
Starring: Glenn Close, Jonathon Pryce, Max Irons

The world famous and New York literary lion American novelist Joe Castleman (Jonathon Pryce) has been named this year's recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the award not totally a surprise but the "telephone call" a relief nonetheless. Joe's wife, Joan (Glenn Close) is equally as excited, and she is prepared to take on the subordinate role in supporting this Nobel journey with and for him as she has with almost everything else in his life. Flashbacks to the 50’s and 60’s show how the two met in 1958 when she was a student in his Creative Writing class at Smith College, and he was still married to his first wife Carol at the time. They later marry and early in their marriage attend a reading by a female author who Joan admires. The author Elaine, tells Joan not to be a writer. Joan is horrified, but Elaine says that no one will read books by a female author. Their son David (Max Irons), an aspiring writer himself, will accompany his parents to Stockholm. David’s need for his father’s approval puts a strain on their father and son relationship. Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater), who is doing research for an unauthorized biography on Joe is also on the flight to Stockholm. Knowing that the biography will be of much more interest with a Nobel laureate attached, he persists in pestering both Joe and Joan. Joe gives him the contemptuous brush-off but Joan cautiously advises a more diplomatic treatment. In Stockholm, the Castleman’s attend many Nobel events, where a great spotlight is placed on Joe and he tells people that Joan doesn’t write. Taking a break from the activities, Joan runs into Nathaniel, and over drinks Nathaniel tells her he found her writings from college, and that they were very good. He talks about some of Joe's earliest work, and that it was fairly bad. He says that her original writing reads most like Joe's current-day writing. He implies that Joan is the real writer of Joe's many works, and urges her to speak out. She calmly denies all of it. Joan, a highly intelligent and still-striking beauty has spent forty years sacrificing her own talent, dreams and ambitions to fan the flames of her charismatic husband and his skyrocketing literary career, meanwhile ignoring his infidelities and excuses. Their fateful pact has built a marriage upon uneven compromises and Joan is reaching her breaking point.