Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Billy Wonka (A) on September 17, 2018 at 14:35:09

Joan (Close) has spent forty years married to the near insufferable Joe Castleman (Pryce). We open with the couple asleep when a daybreak call from Sweden wakes both. Joe has won the Nobel for literature. They begin to celebrate and bounce wildly on their bed. Joe is ecstatic while Joan keeps a cool head to guide her impatient husband through the day.

The story slowly unfolds who Joe and Joan really are. We learn, through flashbacks, that all is not what it appears to be. Annie Starke gives a believable and compelling performance of Young Joan. I would even give her a "nod" for embodying Close as a young woman.

Pryce plays an impatient, narcissistic man with a quick temper that lays waste to family relationships and routinely challenges Joan with indiscretions.

With Pryce's overbearing character you almost feel the film is about him, alas, it is not. Joan emerges with her presence, her conversation with Christian Slater (hopeful biographer), and her final realizations in Stockholm. I think women will "get" Joan's character and sufferings before men will. (I plead guilty.)

4 wonks for good script and Close's performance
1 wank for Pryce's over-the-topness and Max Irons inclusion

When the credits come up your wives will remind you they are king-makers, too.




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