A wife questions her life choices as she travels to Stockholm with her husband, where he is slated to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.6/10
IMDb: 7.2/10
Letterboxd: 3.46/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
Metacritic: 77
TMDB: 7.1/10
Director
Björn Runge
Production
Anonymous Content, Meta Film London, Silver Reel, Tempo Productions, Embankment Films, Creative Scotland
Cast
Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, Max Irons, Harry Lloyd, Annie Starke, Elizabeth McGovern, Johan Widerberg, Karin Franz Körlof, Richard Cordery, Jan Mybrand, Anna Azcárate, Peter Forbes, Fredric Gildea, Jane Garioni, Alix Wilton Regan, Nick Fletcher, Mattias Nordkvist, Suzanne Bertish, Gráinne Keenan
Curator Review
Verdict
A sharply acted, emotionally restrained marital drama that lives or dies on Glenn Close’s performance—and she makes it worth the trip. The plotting can feel schematic, but the film’s slow accumulation of resentment, compromise, and buried ambition lands with real force.
Best for
viewers who prioritize acting over plot mechanics
fans of adult relationship dramas and literary settings
audiences interested in gender, authorship, and emotional labor
people who enjoy tense, talky chamber pieces
Skip if
you need a fast-moving or twisty story
you’re impatient with stagey, dialogue-heavy dramas
you prefer films with a warmer or more openly cathartic tone
you dislike stories built around repression and long-simmering regret
Overview
The Wife is a polished, old-school prestige drama that understands exactly what it has going for it: Glenn Close. The film is built around her face, her silences, and the way decades of compromise can register in a single glance. Jonathan Pryce is effective as the self-satisfied husband, but this is Close’s movie from the first frame to the last.
Worth noting
What gives the film its pull is the steady reveal of a marriage that has been organized around one person’s ambition and the other person’s erasure. The Nobel Prize setting adds a neat, almost cruel irony, turning private grievance into public ceremony. Even when the screenplay leans a little too hard on tidy revelations, the emotional premise remains potent.
Bottom line
It’s not subtle, and some viewers will find the structure too obvious or the dialogue too literary. But as a showcase for controlled fury, wounded intelligence, and the cost of being indispensable, it works. If you like your dramas severe, performance-driven, and quietly devastating, this one earns its reputation.
Top Letterboxd reviews
ty (3★) · 723 likes
Glenn’s shoulders must hurt from carrying this entire film by herself
Emma Stefansky · 470 likes
extremely good prank of the academy to force us all to watch this movie
Karsten (3★) · 368 likes
Mr. Castleman: Without this woman, I am nothing.
The Wife(2018): Lol same!
Lucy (3.5★) · 316 likes
“without this woman, i am nothing”
completely performance driven but in a way that works for me. i thought people might be overhyping her here, but glenn close really nails every single scene. by the final act i was so fully enthralled that i was on the brink of tears. she single handedly did THAT
Wesley C. (4.5★) · 255 likes
Hi Letterboxd! Quick question: How come you guys don't like good movies?
Okay, that's kind of loaded. I mean, obviously you all like the classics. The Godfather and Pulp Fiction will have praise heaped on them constantly (except by edgelords). When it comes to contemporary movies, however, we all seem to be voluntarily buying into a terrible groupthink. Are we really all gonna sit here and let Mission Impossible: Fallout, which has a trite and inconsequential script, actually end up,… more