The wives

Rating: Null/10 (26 November 2003)

(contains spoilers)
The performances by Marcia Gay Harden & Laura Linney were incredible. I've always found Harden to be an intense and intelligent actress, but cold. She never touched my heart. But she reached me in this movie, powerfully. I felt every moment of Celeste's confusion, dread & guilt. Her desperate search in the parade audience at the end, and the tortured look she gives the smug Linney, standing there smiling with her children & the husband who destroyed Celeste's life, were as moving and appalling as anything in the film.
Linney is equally fine. She has a fraction of the on-screen time as Harden, but she makes the last ten minutes of the film astonishing. In that brief time, she becomes an archetype, the Gorgon Guarding Her Home. Her speech to the troubled Jimmy, assuring him that his murder of the innocent Dave was a noble act, is remarkable. She is worse than the evildoer, who feels guilt for his crime: she makes his evil acceptable, in fact honorable. She soothes and convinces him in primal fashion, through sex and his belief in himself as a man. And when, at the end, Celeste looks at her in anguish, her responding look says, `Yes, my husband did destroy your family, to do what he had to do as a man & father. Yes, I know the agony this has caused you. And I have no sympathy.' She is amorality incarnate.
Linney's speech, & the look she & Harden exchange, are key to the conclusion of the story. Evil hatches more evil. There is no justice, only suffering. In conveying this message, the plotline for the women is as significant as that for the men. And we're fortunate to see it so effectively served by such superior actresses.