Glenn Close is THE WIFE

I've been a Glenn Close fan ever since I saw her in 1982's THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP. That was her first film. I had my first TV job then and interviewed her during the press junket for the movie. She recently won a couple of Best Actress awards for her work in a drama called THE WIFE. I saw the film last night. After all these years of enjoying Glenn Close in dramas, comedies and musicals on film, TV and Broadway. here's what I have to say about her new film: Lord, have mercy! What a terrific performance! In THE WIFE, Glenn Close slams across one of the best performances of her entire film career.

When she won the Golden Globes Best Actress honor over Lady Gaga, you may not have been as familiar with THE WIFE as you are with Gaga's box office champ, the newest Warner Bros. remake of A STAR IS BORN. THE WIFE is more of an arthouse film, but don't let that scare you off. It's worth seeing, especially if you're a fellow Glenn Close fan. Also, hers is not the only good performance in the film. There's solid work from Jonathan Pryce as the pompous husband, Christian Slater as smoothly calculating biographer and there's a nice, juicy turn from brunette Elizabeth McGovern (ORDINARY PEOPLE, RAGTIME) as a wise non-best-selling novelist.

Just about everything you need to know about the renowned writer husband's personality is compactly communicated in the first five minutes of the movie. We see a senior couple of obviously comfortable living in their tastefully appointed bedroom. She's in bed. She wakes up when he enters, eating a late night snack. He gets under the covers and wants to get it on. She tells him that she was asleep. She's not really in the mood. He casually dismisses that and tells her that she just needs to "lie there" for his pleasure. Joe Castleman (Pryce) is an intellectual native New Yorker, the kind of person who loves to passive-aggressively impress you with his knowledge and loves praise-filled attention as much as he loves the sound of his own voice. He's a best-selling novelist who hopes to get a call informing him that he's won the Nobel Prize for Literature. With his accommodating wife just lying there, he begins some Caucasian NPR-like sex. Have you ever listened to National Public Radio hosts during the week? The husband starts off with a little dirty talk to get her sexually aroused. One of the words he uses is "tumescent."

He gets the call from the Nobel committee. In congratulatory celebrations at home and in receptions in Stockholm, we see Joe publicly flatter Joanie, his very charming and attractive wife. However, he really treats her like a supporting player instead of his leading lady. The visual design and costuming have a generous use of muted colors. Perfect color choices. The wife seems to have been muted by the marriage. But she needn't have been. Close shows you that, behind the muted appearance, Joanie is a woman who has wit, talent, compassion, fire and she's got the sophisticated, underplayed sexual charisma that her vain husband thinks he has.

Joe has crafted an image of the gracious. good guy intellectual in public. In private, he's an absolute prick to their adult son, himself an aspiring writer. He's also a prick to the biographer who also travels on the same flight to Stockholm. The biographer intends to write a book on the novelist. He's a manipulator who senses that getting to know the wife and the son will reveal more about the husband than the husband would ever reveal about himself. The biographer also wants to write something that will be a best-seller. Joanie is polite to the biographer and has a cocktail with him. She's also hip and, in her elegant way, can outmaneuver him like General Patton in a designer scarf. But there is that one question from the biographer about Joe that stings: "Did he encourage you to keep writing?"

Joe and Joanie met in college in the 1950s. She was a writing student of great promise. He was her married professor. Joanie became his second wife. We see this history presented in flashbacks. That portion feels a bit clichéd, like in a Lifetime TV movie, but it doesn't handicap the overall strength of the film. Joe becomes an acclaimed, financially successful American novelist. During his Nobel Prize acceptance speech at the dinner event, he gushes about how great his wife has been. This is the kind of moment that keeps his "good guy" image vibrant. But Joanie starts to unmute. She's had enough of being in his supporting cast. Joanie turns off the mute button. The resulting action is loud. It's ugly. It's strong. It's fascinating to see.  THE WIFE is a reminder to women to find independent fulfillment in their lives and it's an understanding embrace of those loving, loyal wives who didn't.

I'm positive that the producers and film company realized right off that it had Oscar contender work from Glenn Close in this film. I read a rave review of it in The Guardian in September 2017. Critic Peter Bradshaw wrote "Close gives arguably her best ever performance in an adaptation of Meg Wolitzer's novel." But the film company held off on releasing it in the U.S. that season. When the Oscar nominations were announced in January 2018, three of the five nominees for Best Actress were Saoirse Ronan for LADY BIRD, Meryl Streep for THE POST and Frances McDormand for THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI. McDormand was the big winner. I think it was a clever move on the film company's part to wait for a 2018 release date.

Give Glenn Close the Best Actress Oscar right now. That's how I rate her performance in THE WIFE. Starting with THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, she's been nominated for the Oscar six times. Her other Oscar nominations were received for THE BIG CHILL, THE NATURAL, FATAL ATTRACTION, DANGEROUS LIASONS and ALBERT NOBBS.  It's about time Glenn Close took home some Hollywood gold -- and she really deserves it for THE WIFE.