The Wife is a 2017 drama film directed by Björn L. Runge and written by Jane Anderson, based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Meg Wolitzer. It stars Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, and Christian Slater, and follows an aging woman (Close) who questions her life choices as she travels to Stockholm with her husband (Pryce), who is set to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The film premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2017, and was theatrically released in the United States on August 17, 2018, by Sony Pictures Classics. It received generally positive reviews from critics, with Close's performance garnering widespread acclaim. She won the Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Independent Spirit Award and Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress for her performance, and was also nominated for the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actress.
Plot
In 1958, young Joan Archer, a college student at Smith College, is awed by her professor Joseph Castleman, a handsome, young, married man, and his force of personality and advice. Later, Joan meets a published alumna female author whose cynical view of opportunities available to female writers disheartens her.
Two years later, Joseph has been fired for having an affair with Joan, his marriage is failing, and his first attempt at writing a novel turns out very poorly. Joan, a secretary at a publishing house, observes how the all-male editors dismiss women writers. When Joan criticizes Joseph's work, he threatens to end his relationship with her, claiming she cannot love "a hack." Joan agrees to fix Joseph's novel for him. The work, titled The Walnut, is published and becomes a bestseller.
By 1968, Joseph and Joan are married and living in a large seaside home in Connecticut. Joan is hard at work on a novel to be published under Joseph's name, while Joseph supports her by cooking, cleaning, and caring for their first child, David. As Joseph and Joan converse, it is apparent that Joan's novel reflects their life together, which bores Joan. A narcissist, Joseph has several adulterous affairs over the next four decades and tells everyone that Joan "does not write".
By 1992, an elderly Joseph has become a celebrated author. He wins the Nobel Prize in Literature, about which Joan is less than happy. David, who idolizes his father but is unaware that Joan has written all of Joseph's books, seeks critique of his first short story. The trio flies to Stockholm as Nathaniel Bone, a biographer with a taste for scandal, tries to ingratiate himself with the Castlemans. Joan's unhappiness worsens as adulation is heaped on Joseph. His attempts to publicly thank her for supporting him embitter her further.
Nathaniel, sensing Joan's emotional state, induces her to talk with him over drinks and says that he knows that Joan has ghostwritten a major portion or even all of each of Joseph's novels. Joan does not admit the truth, but Nathaniel is convinced by their conversation that he is correct. Meanwhile, Joseph begins to seduce a young photographer assigned to him, but just as he begins his seduction, his watch alarm goes off for him to take his heart pills, cooling the moment, and she leaves the room. Joseph accuses Joan of abandoning him, while Joan expresses outrage over his attempted affair. The argument ceases when they learn that their daughter Susannah has given birth.
On the night of the Nobel ceremony, David confronts his parents after being told by Nathaniel that Joan is the only writer in the family. Joseph and Joan deny everything. At the ceremony and the banquet which follows, Joan feels increasingly humiliated because Joseph praises her as his support, his muse, his soul. She flees, and Joseph follows her. He demands that she take his prize, but she refuses.
At their hotel, Joan tells Joseph she is divorcing him. They argue violently, and Joseph has a heart attack. Prostrate on the bed, he begs for Joan's love. She tells him she loves him; he calls her a good liar and dies moments later. On the Concorde flight back to the US, Nathaniel offers his condolences to Joan. She tells him that if he tries to print anything that undermines Joseph's reputation as a writer, she will sue him. David overhears her. Joan says she will tell David and his sister the truth when they get home. She then turns the page to the journal she had opened, runs her hand over a blank page, and looks up.