THE WIFE

Cert Running time

This stuffy and stagey drama set in the privileged world of literary publishing isn’t much of a page-turner despite some great performances.

Glenn Close – a six-time Oscar nominee for films including 1987’s thriller Fatal Attraction – is a boiling pot of resentment as the wife of a successful novelist who in 1992 is invited to snowy Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize for literature.

Brit actor Jonathan Pryce plays her weak-hearted, ill-tempered narcissistic husband and they’re accompanied by Max Irons as their surly adult son as they move from luxury cars to cafes and hotels.

Based on the novel by Meg Wolitzer, we’re given an uncomfortably voyeuristic insight into their marriage as they squabble over the value of their differing contributions to the husband’s career.

Christian Slater plays the only honest character around and, as a muck-raking biographer with a keen nose for a potentially career-ending scoop, we’re probably not supposed to like him as much as I did.