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This film presents a fascinating exposé of a marital relationship of over thirty years at a moment when mounting tension between the two spouses precipitates a dramatic implosion.
In the title role Glenn Close plays Joan, the enigmatic, quietly powerful wife, who has dedicated her life to furthering her husband's writing career at the expense of her own. As the film opens, husband Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) is due to collect the Nobel Prize for literature. Set in the 1990s, the couple's story unfolds through frequent flashbacks, beginning with their first meeting at a creative writing class, in which Close's real-life daughter plays the young Joan. One of several students charmed by Joe, a young, charismatic professor, Joan soon ousts all other romantic contenders, including his wife and new baby. The strength of their merger lies in their shared passion for writing, combined with his vanity and love of the limelight whilst she prefers to remain in the shadows. This conscious and unconscious contract drives their shared, sometimes heartless, ambition for literary success.
The film's action takes place over a short trip to Stockholm for the Nobel ceremony.
In an early scene, Joe and Joan are in their bedroom at home in Connecticut. It's now or never in Joe's career: will he get the hoped-for phone call from Sweden? He is wide awake and restless and demands sex from his sleepy spouse, refusing to accept her gentle no, pestering her like a child until she concedes. Half smiling, she grunts and grimaces mildly as he penetrates her, disclosing her unwilling mind and body. Compliant and resentful, she dutifully provides the ever-ready breast.
Suddenly the phone rings and it's Stockholm. Joe wants his wife to be part of it, insisting the caller holds until she reaches a phone extension. The Nobel Prize is his, or rather theirs.
Do the partners complete each other, like yin and yang? Or are they caught up in a stifling, enmeshed dynamic, using each other in unhealthy ways? J