Cast: Tom Noonan, Wallace Shawn, Karen Young, Julie Hagerty
Director: Tom Noonan
Producers: Scott Macaulay and Robin O'Hara
Screenplay: Tom Noonan
Cinematography: Joe DeSalvo
Music: Tom Noonan
Tom Noonan's 1994 debut, What Happened Was…, remains one of the creepiest, most incisive motion pictures ever made about a first date. It's a strange, disturbing piece that focuses on two characters trying, and failing, to connect during an intimate evening. Now, some two years later, Noonan is back with The Wife, an equally edgy drama about how an unplanned dinner party tears at the fabric of a pair of unstable marriages.
The setup is reasonably simple. We are introduced to Jack (Noonan) and his wife, Rita (Julie Hagerty), a pair of New Age therapists whose marriage is on the rocks -- they are profoundly incompatible and uncommunicative. One snowy night, they are visited at their secluded New York state demesne by one of their patients, Cosmo (Wallace Shawn), who has brought his wife, Arlie (Karen Young), to meet his therapists. When the spirited Arlie decides to invite herself and her husband to dinner, the stage is set for all sorts of revelations.
Despite the inclusion of some low-key comedy, The Wife is basically a claustrophobic downer (although not as claustrophobic as What Happened Was…). In addition to dissecting the lives of his four main characters, Noonan rips into therapists in general and New Age therapists in particular. This is not a nice, "touchy-feely" film about people being healed by getting in touch with their inner selves. Instead, it's about damaged men and women trapped in dysfunctional relationships.
The script keenly observes various elements of human nature, and numerous scenes are startling in the clarity and intelligence with which the characters are presented. On the other hand, Noonan has a tendency to write pretentious dialogue, and certain passages are cluttered with needless verbiage. For the most part, the intimate moments work; those that concentrate on globally philosophical issues tend to sputter.
Karen Young, who has had small parts in a number of major studio features, is explosive as the unpredictable Arlie, and, in many ways, her vivacity holds the film together. Wallace Shawn is his usual steady self as a neurotic, nearly-"normal" man who "can't go on" with his marriage as it is. Noonan, with a quietly-intense, almost-sinister performance, paints an unsettling portrait of Jack as someone who derives sadistic pleasure from probing open emotional wounds. Julie Hagerty, better known for comic roles (Airplane, What About Bob?), plays a woman who craves closeness with an aloof husband.
The technical and visual aspects of The Wife engage the attention. Noonan constantly toys with odd camera angles, distorted perspectives, and shots involving reflected images. One scene has characters viewed through a window overlapping those reflected in it. Another uses mirrors to depict two physically-distanced conversations in the same frame. As in What Happened Was…, lighting is used to great effect. On one occasion, the light from a flickering fire playing on Jack's features gives him a demonic appearance.
With its echoes of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? and its use of the European style of moving the story forward through dialogue rather than action (this could almost be Eric Rohmer at his grimmest), The Wife consistently challenges viewers. It stumbles occasionally (sometimes noticeably), and isn't as hypnotizing as What Happened Was…, but many of Noonan's observations about how men and women interact are on-target. By turns uncomfortable and fascinating, The Wife offers a unique perspective of the age-old institution of marriage.
© 1996 James Berardinelli