‘The whole male-female Thing in This country is very volatile right now. I think many women are feeling used by men. They invest a lot in a relationship, in nurturing a man emotionally and in his career, but they have their own careers and emotions and they don’t get that nurturing in return.
‘The whole male-female Thing in This country is very volatile right now. I think many women are feeling used by men. They invest a lot in a relationship, in nurturing a man emotionally and in his career, but they have their own careers and emotions and they don’t get that nurturing in return.” These words are Glenn Close’s, and they offer a perfect description of her newest film, The Wife. But this quote is actually three decades old; she said it to this magazine in 1987, shortly after she finished Fatal Attraction.
If Close were trying to shake the specter of Alex Forrest— the bunny-boiling career woman who tried to destroy her married lover’s family in that movie, which remains Close’s most iconic role—The Wife’s Joan Castleman would be just the ticket. She’s everything Forrest was not: long married, dutiful and supportive, a woman who has spent her life polishing so her spouse could shine. She’s neat and nurturing and nice to everyone. She’s a wife, after all.
Or is she? Forrest, Close has long said, wasn’t the unhinged harpy everyone took her for, but rather a mentally ill woman damaged by childhood sexual trauma. Similarly, in The Wife, based on the novel of the same name by Meg Wolitzer, all is not as it seems. From the moment Joe Castleman, Joan’s husband, discovers that he has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the threads that have bound the couple tightly together for decades begin to unravel. Watching Close portray a woman who has given more to her marriage than she perhaps should have is like watching the fog lift from a stranded ski lift. By the end of the movie, audiences can see what’s going on clearly, but the view is still a little shocking.
This story is from the August 27,2018 edition of Time.
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This story is from the August 27,2018 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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