Film: 'The Wife'

I'd been looking forward to this enormously - and wasn't let down in the least. It's a searing piece of family melodrama, played to perfection by Jonathan Pryce and Glenn Close (whose film this really is, as the title infers) as a long-married couple, and Max Irons (son of Jeremy I.) playing their son - with Christian Slater as a smarmy reporter who captures a character somewhere midway between plain annoying and obnoxious.

It's set almost entirely in Stockholm in a plush hotel where Pryce, a successful author, is there with his wife and son to collect his newly awarded Nobel Prize for Literature. In a brief prologue to their journey to Sweden, set in their Connecticut home in 1992, we see Pryce getting the phone call telling him of his award, with Close joining in his celebratory mood. However, there's the occasional subtle look on her face hinting that there's something flickering underneath her going along with his jubilant mood. Their son is also an aspiring writer, though he feels that, unlike his mother, his father is holding back on the effusive praise he'd been looking for. All the submerged feelings come out in the ensuing days. Flashbacks to the older couple's early days of acquaintanceship and relationship, culminating in their marriage are depicted (their younger selves played by Harry Lloyd and Annie Stark).  
As pent-up truths and repressed feelings come to the surface in Sweden, blazing rows ensue between Close and Pryce as well as a major confrontation with the son - such anger and venom reminding me strongly of Burton and Taylor in 'Who's Afraid.....', though in the latters' case it's been said that they were just playing out the hideous vituperation which regularly came between them in real life (so if that was true, they didn't have much acting to do!?)  In the case of Close and Pryce, though, they really have to go for it hammer and tongs, and that they most certainly do!

If Jonathan Pryce is good (which he definitely is) Glenn Close is an absolute marvel - easily one of her best ever performances on screen, if not the best. She can capture the most nuanced change of mood in her features without saying a word, and it's a treat to watch. She's definitely one of my very favourite of the more 'mature' actresses currently around.

Director is Swede Bjorn Runge, who creates a practically flawless piece within a manageable slightly over 90 mins, based on book by Meg Walitzer and screenplay by Jane Anderson. 

If you like the idea of a small-scale, family drama with home truths exploding, their having been kept a lid on for decades, I cannot recommend this highly enough - and if you're as much a fan of Glenn Close as I am, well, that ought to clinch it. Bliss!...............8.