Review of The Wife

This is the story of the talented ingenue marrying the no-talent professor/author, and their symbiotic but self-destructive relationship over the 40 years of marriage leading up to the Nobel Prize. Suddenly, the wife is having a self-awakening (perhaps spurred by Christian Slater's intrusion into the story) --and it makes no sense. If she has "suppressed rage" --there were decades she could have rearranged her life. Similarly, the husband is a caricature of himself-- literally he can't help himself from succumbing to every young pretty girl, even at the rehearsal for receiving the Nobel Prize? And his unnecessary meanness to the son, who in his own right is a bit of an idiot-- ie If you don't want to receive literary criticism from your acclaimed father, don't go into the same profession! Lastly, at the end of the movie, it shows the wife smoothing a blank piece of paper with I presume, the implication that now she can write freely-- how is that going to happen? Under her own name going forward, it will be apparent that she wrote the other books, or she will have to dumb down her talent. You can't have it both ways.

Altogether, the plot is pointless but the wonderful acting of all the main characters and the gorgeous backdrop of Stockholm, make it not a total waste of time.