Where I Watched it: Netflix

English Audio Description?: Yes

One of these days, the Academy might bestow an Academy Award to Glenn Close. It just will be for a movie she is in that is better than The Wife.

Finally catching up on this gem thanks to Netflix, The Wife has a simple premise. A man (Jonathan Pryce) has been declared the Nobel prize winnner for Literature, and he and his wife (Glenn Close) prepare to celebrate by taking a trip and reveling in the pomp and circumstance of the moment. Along for the ride will be their grown son (Max Irons), who wants to be a great author like his father, and yet hasn’t really gotten the approval he so desperately seeks. Also, Christian Slater is in this.

It’s a movie about choices, and one where someone is going to point out that I’m a guy, and I just don’t understand. I could never understand these choices women make. To shrink themselves, or to choose to be the puppet master behind it all that never openly gets their recognition. It’s got a tinge of that “don’t judge me” choices you might find in a drama where a woman chooses the abusive partner, or even more recently (and done way better than this), the movie A Thousand And one. You may not agree with the choice, but it is up to the filmmaker to sell you on that choice. That last movie did it very well, which lands a gut punch of an ending. This one has a script that fails Glenn, and even though her acting is on point, her character development is middling, and the ending means nothing.

It isn’t a great screenplay or a show of great direction. It just happens to be watchable enough that two legends carry the damn thing across the finish line. Pryce is given so many odd character traits I’m surprised he wraps them all in his character. Is he a womanizer? It’s not really clear, because he seems to be taking a slower route to revealing that. he’s certainly not a letch, leering all over the place, so when he has the opportunity to make his move it is far more clumsy. This doesn’t match with what we are told about his character, as someone who had strayed before. he certainly lacks the suave technique to make that convincing. But it’s not Pryce who fails the character, its the films lack of possibilities. Also, considering what we see in the flashbacks, he should have a very different relationship with his son.

There’s a twist to this film that would suggest, to me, that if what is said is true, their son would be more familiar with his father and not his mother. but, it’s the total opposite. It’s like the film wants you to believe that she toiled away in seclusion, but also found the time to be that strong figure in her son’s life. Are we shown anything to support that? no.

The Wife is also a bit of a gimmick, in that Close’s actual daughter plays her in flashbacks. So, if you’re in the sighted group, I’m sure that’s why she looks familiar to you. The flashbacks are supposed to help build the story, but I’m not really sure they do. At least, not in the way these flashbacks are presented. We are shown too little, and not the right things to back up the characters these writers come to be.

It’s a testament to how Glenn Close can turn coal into diamonds when she gets nominated for mediocre films. This film is beneath her, but the films worthy of her talent are being offered to younger actresses willing to age up as the film progresses. A different director would have cast a young actress for the flashbacks, and just used the same person with a ton of makeup on for the older scenes. The fact that Glenn is in this at all is kind of a miracle.

The audio description here is really average. There isn’t a profound detail given to any of the factors of the film that change, like the time period, or when they are in a different country doing a bit of sight seeing. Everything is presented as if there was nothing extraordinary happening which is surprisingly on brand for a script featuring a man winning a Nobel prize. The narration does do the job of keeping track of the limited cast, and their movements. Because no one is ever wearing anything particularly spectacular, and rarely in a location of note, a lot of detail is given to the facial expressions, allowing the actors performances to reach beyond just their ability to deliver lines.

At the end, it’s not a wonderful film, but the performances by Close and Pryce are strong, and it is somewhat amazing to see what they are able to do with such an undercooked screenplay.

Final Grade: C+