THE WIFE

Directed by Bjorn Runge, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce as Joan and Joe Castlemans and Christian Slater as the journalist.

GHOST WRITERS IN THE SKY!

In THE WIFE, veteran actors Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce have been ill-served by a lame and improbable script. Too bad. It should have been fun to see these two pros on screen. What results, however, is mostly a pompous, strutting Pryce and a showcase for the Glenn Close Enigmatic Stare.

Dramas about writers and writing are notoriously difficult to bring across. There are exceptions, notably Jane Campion’s Angel at My Table, about Janet Frame, and End of the Tour, about David Foster Wallace. And recently we have had Genius, about the relationship between Thomas Wolfe and editor Maxwell Perkins—whose subject of an editorial hand behind the writer’s success rather resembles THE WIFE.

But THE WIFE doesn’t belong in that accompany.

After more than thirty years spent ghostwriting her husband’s books, Joan Castleman watches in dismay as her husband Joe thanks her during the ceremony in Stockholm for being his muse and support. Disgusted, she leaves and threatens divorce. She would rather live in anonymity than be credited merely as his helpmate. But she is more than that. She wrote his books in secret, all of them, behind a closed door, the family unaware of what was going on. All this time, her husband’s main job has been to stay out of her way. Check that: He does do something: He cracks walnuts a lot. I kid you not. He not only cracks them for her, but he cracks them for all his mistresses, too. That’s a lot of walnuts. And a lot of mistresses. Even the title of one of his books is The Walnut. Really. I expected a “walnut wrangler” on the end credits. How he’s been able to disguise the fact that he hasn’t been writing at all is never explained. Maybe the walnut-cracking was enough to fill his spare time. The closest he gets to literature is to quote James Joyce to any young lady who catches his eye. Have a walnut?

Poor Joan Castleman. Is she another downtrodden female writer? Not a bit of it. She’s not only content to be his ghostwriter, but flashbacks reveal that she had wanted to write his books. It was her idea from the get-go. He thinks he is seducing her; but in reality it is she who has been seducing him, catering to his ambitions for the success, fame, and privilege of a successful writer. She is no victim. This is her choice. Who is guiltier of hoaxing the public, he or she? As for that celebrated Glenn Close Enigmatic Smile, is this the expression of a wronged wife or a crafty manipulator? And yet, at the end, we’re supposed to believe that she has HATED this all along. Please.

I realize this is probably a subversive reading that I’m offering here, one that is completely counter to the movie’s putative commentary on The Wronged Woman. . . but that’s my take and I’m sticking to it.

Meanwhile, what about the Castleman books? What do we know about them? Why the Nobel Prize? According to the speech at the Nobel ceremony, Castleman’s books have “changed the course of literature.” Whatever that means. Too bad such superlatives don’t describe this script.

We can’t forget another character who shows up at the proceedings. He’s a trash journalist, a ruthless opportunist who wants to write the tell-all expose of the Castleman’s chicanery. Christian Slater is perfectly cast and perfectly hateful. He’s right where he belongs. He and the Castlemans deserve each other. His dialogues with Mrs. Castleman demonstrate only that she’s a greater fake than he is.

Lastly, there is one more tag-along character in this wearisome parade. And that is Castleman’s son, a budding writer, God help him. He wears a perpetually surly expression and wrings his hands because Daddy won’t praise his own pitiful stories. Does he know that the best example Daddy can provide him is how to find a beautiful graduate student who will do the writing for him? As for the nut-cracking, he is on his own.