The main reason to see "The Wife" is for Glenn Close's performance as Joan because she is thoroughly gripping as, literally, the power behind the throne. Otherwise, the film is just 'meh.' And maybe that's because I'm not a fan of Jonathan Pryce, whose Joe Castleman, an author up for the Nobel Prize, is a totally unsympathetic character. You see, Joe, a consummate philanderer, might not have authored his books. Maybe Joan did. And as things play out, you wonder why these issues haven't bubbled to the surface earlier in their marriage. It's a fault of the script that "The Wife" hangs on such a preposterous premise.
The film, directed by Swedish filmmaker Bjorn Runge, flashes back to the beginnings of their relationship, when Joan was a brilliant student and Joe was her literature professor. The very nature of their courtship was rooted in deceit - Joe was married to another woman at the time. And things haven't changed. Some 30 years later, he's still chasing anything female and dropping the same lines he used on Joan. Christian Slater is effective as a smarmy writer who has the jump on Joe's secret and is openly threatening to expose him. An under-developed subplot is the father-son rivalry between Joe and David (Max Irons).
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