The Wife (Silver Reel, Meta Film, Anonymous Content, Tempo Productions, Embankment Films, Creative Scotland, Spark Film & TV,, Film I Väst, Chimney, Sir-Reel Productions, Sony Pictures Classics, 2017)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

On Fridan, January 20 my huisband Charles and I enjoyed a 2017 movie called The Wife, directed by Swedish director Björn L. Runge and written by Jane Anbderson based on a novel by Meg Wolitzer. I had picked up the DVD from a free pile at the North Park library and I thought it sounded interesting, but it turned out to be even better than I’d anticipated – even though it was annoyingly preceded by no fewer than seven previews, including one for a film called The Happy Prince starring Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde, and a documentary about Maria Callas which apparently featured Joyce Di Donato impersonating Callas on the soundtrack. (The film would probably annoy me because judging from the preview it’s neither fish nor fowl: neither a documentary about Callas nor a fiction film with Di Donato playing her – and I can think of worse choices.) I was expecting The Wife to be a tale of the put-upon wife of a famous novelist traveling with him to Stockholm where he’s scheduled to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. As things turned out, I got a much better movie than that. The central character in The Wife is Joe Castleman (Glenn Close), wife of celebrated novelist Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce).

They met in 1958 while she was an English major at Smith College and he was her professor. In a flashback scene in which they’re played by younger actors (Annie Starke as Joan and Harry Lloyd as Joe), she meets him in his office and he asks her what she’s doing that night. Both she and we think he’s hitting on her, but it turns out he’s already married and has a daughter, for whom he needs a baby sitter. Proximity works its magic and they end up falling in love – or at least lust – and after Joe leaves his first wife Carol for her, they stay together despite his occasional extra-relational activities, all of which get turned into books that become best-sellers and enhance his reputation. The main part of the story is set in 1992, in which Joe receives the call from Stockholm advising him he’s won the Nobel just after he’s had sex with his wife – or at least he’s fingered her to orgasm, to her initial distaste but eventual pleasure. On the flight to Stockholm (aboard the Concorde) Joe is harassed by Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater), who wants to write a biography of Joe Castleman and wants Joe to authorize it. The Castlemans are also accompanied by their son David (Max Irons, Jeremy Irons’ son), who aspires to be a writer like his dad and has written a story, which his mom thinks is good but his dad can’t be bothered to read.

They have another child, daughter Sussanah (Alix Wilson Regan). But she doesn’t come along on the trip to Stockholm because she’s in the late stages of pregnancy, We never meet her husband or partner, and we find out very little about her, but Joe is naturally delighted at the prospect of becoming a grandfather. When they arrive in Stockholm they’re coached on the proper etiquette for the Nobel ceremony, including receiving the award directly from the King of Sweden. They’re also subjected to an endless series of formal banquets and receptions. Joe is also assigned a photographer, a young woman named Linnea (Karin Franz Körlof) who’s in awe of him and looks like she’s going to be his latest extramarital conquest until they’re interrupted by yet another call to a dull reception. Director Ronge and writer Anderson keep dropping hints that all is not as it seems between the Castlemans. There’s a flashback scene in which the Castlemans go to hear author Elaime Mozell (Elizabeth McGovern, who’s in just that one scene but makes na indelible impression) read from one of her novels, and when Elaine asks Joan if she intends to keep writing and she answers noncommittally, Elaine sais, “Don’t.” She points to her books as part of a shelf of Smith College alumnae and says the novel she read from has sold a grand total of 200 copies, mostly to her relatives.

Elaine tells Joan that women writers just aren’t taken seriously by the men who run the publishing industry, and Joan just needs to face that. Also, Nathaniel takes Joan to a bar in Stockholm and over drinks he tells her that he’s been doing preliminary research for his Castleman biography and has read some of his early stories – which were nothing spectacular. He then tells Joan that her story in the Smith archives read more like early Joe Castleman than his did. There’s also another hint in which son David rather testily tells his dad that maybe he should be looking to his other parent for literary inspiration. Eventually we learn that [spoiler alert!] Joan, not Joe, has been the actual writer of the Castleman novels; he has been the public face of their partnership while she stayed at home. The two of them worked in an office together and locked everyone else out, including their kids, while she typed out the manuscripts and actually created the acclaimed novels. We’re first dropped that information in a context that briefly makes us wonder whether we’re supposed to believe it, but then Ronge and Anderson cut to another flashback with the younger actors, set in 1963 in their home office, that makes it clear it is she, not he, who is the literary genius.

Joan gets disgusted and threatens to leave him, he responds by starting to give her a back rub – his usual technique for persuading her to stay after she gets angry with him – and just then he has a heart attack that proves to be fatal. On the plane back home, Nathaniel Bone confronts her and says he’s going to write a book that will expose the decades-long deception, and Joan threatens to sue him for everything he’s got if he does so. Then she tells David that as soon as they get home, she will tell him and his sister the whole story. The last scene shows her looking over a notebook containing a half-finished something-or-other, and ini my mind the way I’d have liked to see The Wife end was that this turns out to be notes for a novel. Eventually Joan would write a book based on it, publish it as her completion of his last, unfinished story, and the critics would give it rave reviews align the ines of, “She’s so perfectly absorbed his voice it’s impossible to tell where his work leaves off and hers begins.”

My husband Charles and I have both been wracking our brains since to figure out whether The Wife is based on a true story. Certainly there are extensive tales in the literary world of women using either male pseudonyms (like George Eliot, George Sand or Charlotte Brontë, who first published Jane Eyre under the gender-ambiguous name “Currer Bell”) or initials (like Harry Potter creator Joanne “J.. K.” Rowling or early Star Trek writer Dorothy “D. C.” Fontana) to disguise their true gender. There have also been a few couples in which both people wrote but only the male signed the stories, like F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald or science-fiction author Henry Kuttner and his wife, C. L. Moore. Long after his death, painter Walter Keane was revealed to have signed his name to paintings actually created by his wife – and a movie has been made about them, too – but I don’t know of a case in which a literary couple pulled off the long-term deception depicted in this film. Still, it’s all too believable even today that a genuinely creative woman writer would realize she stood no chance of long-term success, either artistic or commercial, without using her husband to “front” for her!