In 1992, Joe (Pryce) wins the Nobel Prize for literature and his summoned to Stockholm to receive the honour along with his steadfast wife Joan (Close) and family. Their daughter (Regan) is heavily pregnant so can't attend, but their adult son David (Irons) comes along. As does nosey journalist Nathaniel (Slater), who is hoping to write Joe's biography. But David is annoyed that Joe is dismissing his own work as a writer, and Joan is tired of playing the role of the supportive spouse when there's a lot more to their story than that.

A deep, dark secret gives the film a driving sense of intrigue and kind of undercuts the other themes. This is a story about how women have learned to survive in a man's world by remaining invisibly in the background. This topic feels fresh, but the film's approach to it is somewhat arch. Thankfully, the character drama is mesmerising, building a raw sense of conflict between people who seem to be living a perfect life. There are micro-aggressions everywhere, plus bigger ones beneath the surface.

Close and Pryce are terrific, diving in headlong to depict these people warts and all. Their interaction has an intoxicating authenticity, earthy and easy but layered with a sense that they've fallen into a routine that obscures things they don't want to deal with. In this sense, Close gets the showier role as a woman who breaks the seal on the unspoken. But Pryce never blinks. And Irons has some powerful scenes of his own, even if he is oddly sidelined.

Somewhat unnecessarily, the film continually flashes back to the 1950s and 60s to show the younger Joan and Joe (Starke and Lloyd). These sequences are nicely shot and played, but don't add to the film. Especially when there are actors like Close and Pryce who can let much more forceful emotions flicker across their faces as they remember their past than anything we see in a cutaway. Indeed, they are what gives weight to this pungent exploration of gender roles.

themes, language, sexuality

16.Jul.18