The Wife (I) (2017)
Trivia
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Spoilers (1)
Annie Starke, who plays the young Joan, is the daughter of Glenn Close.
Although the film was screened at film festivals in 2017 (and subsequently acquired for distribution), it was rumored to have been held for release until 2018, in order to give Glenn Close a better shot at an Oscar nomination.
The film has enormous personal relevance for Glenn Close who recalled her own mother, in her 80s, telling her that she felt she had accomplished nothing in her life.
Glenn Close approached Gary Oldman to play Joe Castleman but he was unavailable for the role.
It is based on the novel of the same name by Meg Wolitzer.
Annie Starke gets an "Introducing" credit (usually reserved for an actor's very first appearance in a movie), even though she has been in three other movies: South Pacific (2001), Albert Nobbs (2011), and We Don't Belong Here (2017). South Pacific and Albert Nobbs both also starred Starke's mother, Glenn Close.
Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce rehearsed around a table for a week before shooting began on the film.
When the film was originally announced, Frances McDormand, Logan Lerman, and Brit Marling were part of the cast. When production finally began, though, all three had dropped out and were replaced by Elizabeth McGovern, Max Irons, and Annie Starke, respectively.
Director Björn Runge's first English film.
The name Joan Archer, as well as the short haircut and some of the characteristics of the role, point to the French heroine Jeanne D'Arc (aka Joan of Arc).
In the original Broadway production of "The Real Thing", Glenn Close played Jeremy Irons' lover, both winning Tonys for their roles. In Reversal of Fortune (1990), they played a married couple, while in The House of the Spirits (1993) they played sister and brother. In this movie, Close plays the mother of Max Irons, Irons' real life son.
Early in the movie, Jonathan Pryce's character quotes a sentence from Don Quixote. Pryce was the "real" Don Quixote in the Terry Gilliam movie, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018).
Glenn Close was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Lead Actress.
Premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, after which it was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for distribution.
Glenn Close plays the mother of Max Irons whose dad, Jeremy Irons, played her husband Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune (1990).
Christian Slater and Glenn Close were seen filming at Glasgow Kelvin College Springburn Campus.
Jonathan Pryce and Harry Lloyd play older and younger versions of the same person. Both actors also appeared on Game of Thrones (2011) as totally unrelated characters.
Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce were spotted on Cadogan Street, Glasgow, filming a scene in a black limousine on 29-30 November 2016.
Spoilers
The excerpt by James Joyce that gets quoted twice by Joseph Castleman is the very ending of the short story "The Dead", from his collection "Dubliners" (1914). There are some parallels between the short story and the movie, especially between the last scene in Joyce's work and the sequence right after the party celebrating the Nobel Prize. The bedroom scene, after a party, where the wife has some "secret" to reveal is a strong parallel, as well as the shot of the snow "falling softly" on the living and the dead...
