Interested in seeing Björn Runge’s (Happy End, Daybreak) much anticipated The Wife? Do yourself a solid. Skip and see the remarkably well-made Big Eyes instead. It’s essentially the same movie, except it’s actually entertaining. The Wife makes its point in a nuanced fashion. It’s slow and not in a good way. Its two main characters same so different from one another, you wonder why they are still together. And then when you do learn the big, dark secret, the only question you have is why they didn’t divorce years ago. Nevertheless, it’s a movie that is gaining recognition for the performance of its lead (Glenn Close – Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons) as Joan (aka The Wife). Could it lead to her seventh Academy Award nomination? Yes. Should it? It’s still early in the season, but probably not.

So if you’ve seen Big Eyes, you know what this movie is about based on my unapologetic first paragraph. If you haven’t, I encourage you to stop reading and watch it. It is fabulous in a way that you wouldn’t expect. The performances of Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz far exceeded the performances of Close and counterpart Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Ronin). But if you haven’t seen Big Eyes and want to keep reading, I will keep the remainder of this review spoiler-free. Pryce stars as Joe, Joan’s wife and one of the most unlikable characters you’ll see on the big screen this year. The Castleman’s are just your normal elderly couple, right? Not quite. There is a secret that they share. But it’s more than a secret. It’s more like a betrayal. And it’s more than a betrayal that you might at first imagine. It’s also tough to believe that all is okay between this husband and wife before we meet them, on the day that he is notified that he has been selected to win the Noble Prize for Literature. In fact, it’s almost like the inexperienced Runge set up the film’s first scenes as seeming to be so loving between the leads so that what happens in the many scenes that follow feel like they are set in stark contrast. But it feels forced in the beginning. It feels forced in the middle. And it feels forced at the end.

As I frequently mention in my reviews, I love movies that use flashbacks extraordinarily well. Ones that don’t this technique well get on my nerves. This was one of those incidences. There was no growth in the flashbacks. It’s like they were on repeat, and there was no regularity to them. The flashbacks were of the couple falling in love and the secret they shared emerging for the first time. He was slightly older. She was impressionable. He thinks the world is his oyster. She knows better but humors him. Fast-forward to the present day, and he hasn’t much changed, but boy, she has. She’s not impressionable. She’s a realist struggling with what to do about the secret the two share. He still thinks he rules the world, but she’s not afraid to inform him differently. So much has changed in the dynamic of their relationship, and, for the life of me, I don’t know how you could assume that these two could still be together. Sure they have kids, but they are grown and on their own, so the whole “stay together for the kids” argument could be thrown out the window. Joe was a putrid, self-indulgent, arrogant man who had an astonishing sense of entitlement. We can’t stand the man, and we only had to spend an hour and a half with him. Honestly, it isn’t easy to imagine how a charming, mysteriously judicious woman like Joan could stay married to this adulterous man who occasionally belittles her and often speaks for her before she has a chance to for four decades. It’s hard to fathom, though we do sort of feel as if she may have reached her tipping point after Joe parades the Noble Prize for Literature selection in front of her.

Christian Slater (Murder in the First, Mobsters) plays biographer Nathaniel Bone. He’s a thorn in the Castlemans’ side, “conveniently” always running into one or both of them. So it’s no surprise when he ends up on the same flight to Sweden to be there for Joe’s ceremony. Nathaniel wants to write a biography on Joe and hints that he knows about the secret that the couple is hiding (there have been rumors for years). It’s not Slater’s best performance…in fact, this role could have been performed by anyone. In fact, he’s so persistent that it’s annoying, and you almost wish it was an actor that you weren’t familiar with. He wants the Castlemans to cooperate with him with his book, but if they won’t, he assures them he’s still going to write it. When he pinpoints Joan, it’s obvious to us that she is torn. Does she continue to be the dutiful wife, or has Joe’s level of egotism reached the point where she can’t just take it anymore? It’s a dilemma that is layered with decades of mixed emotions.

Close is the highlight of this film, but it feels very far from her greatest career performances. I mean, this was the actress who absolutely lit up 1987 with her performance of a psychotic woman who torments the life of a married man who she has a one-night stand in the unforgettable Fatal Attraction. This could, and probably will, earn her Oscar nomination number seven, but she will not win. It won’t be close enough to give her a “feel good” Academy Award. But what she does well in this film is build her character little by little, as much with her nonverbals as she does her verbals. She often waits before speaking. She often waits before not speaking. She offers these wry smiles that have so much hidden meaning behind them that you could guess five different things that she might be thinking, and none of them would be correct. She knows so much more than she leads onto. Her looks towards other characters convey a meaning deep inside her that there is something just waiting to come out. The question becomes, will it and, if so, how?

This movie isn’t great, in my opinion. But I’m also willing to admit that it may be a generational thing. I think you’ll have to judge this one for yourself if you deem the movie important enough to see. You’ll have to learn this betrayal that Joan and Joe share, their handling of it, and ultimately if you think it’s A) effective and/or B) worthy of a story. For me, it was not. It’s not a movie I can recommend when there are better ones out there (like Big Eyes) that do a very similar storyline but do it so much better.

Plot 7/10
Character Development 6/10
Character Chemistry 6/10
Acting 8/10
Screenplay 6/10
Directing 6/10
Cinematography 6/10
Sound 6/10
Hook and Reel 6/10
Universal Relevance 7/10
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