Customer Reviews

The Good Wife

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It is not often that a married couple makes a decent movie together. Think Eyes Wide Shut. But this movie has the chemistry to make that exception happen. Bryan and Rachel were not even this sexy together in the Thorn Birds, and it is because here she is more the villianous one than he is. Most of the movie is fine (they have been married for 20 years), and this probably echoes their real life. Add Steven Vidler as Sugar and Sam Neill as Neville, and the plot thickens. Sugar decides to move in, and wants to gain experience by sleeping with Marge (Rachel). The thing is that Sonny (Bryan) is so intent on making his wife happy, he does not even really bat an eyelash over it. When Neville comes to town to be the new bartender and seduces Marge right after he gets off the train, she turns him down. The rest is what makes the movie the thriller it is. If you are expecting Sonny and Marge to echo Luke and Meggie, you will be let down. I think this part is more real, especially for Bryan, who shows the audience that if this film does echo his marriage with Rachel (aside from the infedility), it is easy to see why they are still happily married after 20 years.

Set in 1939 in Australia, a woman (Rachel Ward) is mostly happily married to a good provider, but is bored in bed. She falls for a local bartender (Sam Neill), who seems to be the Lothario type. But when she literally throws herself at him, he tosses her away. Her doggedly faithful husband takes her back. The potential for something really excellent is here, but nothing comes of it. The characters are too zombie-like to prompt us very much to care about them.

Rachel Ward takes this movie over. She owns it. She has matured as an actress and this piece shows her evolution as a first rate performer. Why oh why oh why haven't we seen more of her. Her subleties are magnificent. Bryan Brown, as her husband, has a quieter role and, as always, he delivers. What can you say about these two - thank god they found each other.

This film has all the artsiness of the very best independent films.

Marge, played by Rachel Ward, lives on a small station with her lumberjack husband Sunny (Bryan Brown). Marge is discontent. Bryan invites his younger brother, the naive Sugar, to live with them. Sugar asks Marge for sexual experience. Marge and Sunny acquiese. Sugar is lonely, Marge is bored, Sunny feels obligated to look after his brother.

The short unsatisfying sexual experience between Marge and Sugar leaves Marge feeling wistful. One day in town the new barkeep, Neville, played by New Zealander Sam Neil, puts the hard word on Marge. Marge declines and Neville tells her "a woman only gets one chance with me" and walks away. From that point on, Marge is obsessed and wants what she can't have. Neville is a "playa" to the extreme-putting the moves on women "since he was a kid", hoping to find the "one". Marge puts her marriage and reputation at risk to follow Neville and watch his sexual escapades.

This movie explores the age old theme of women being sexually attracted to men who treat them poorly. Neville is an unconscious incompotent, believing he's going to find the right woman by "treating them mean and keeping them keen". Marge's husband, Sunny is seriously hot and masculine, so I'm not sure I get her motivations for desiring the slimy Neville, but there is no accounting for taste. Love and desire drive humans to the inexplicable.

A good movie about the odd connections that develop between people in a small town. Well acted. Bryan Brown is a gorgeous and sensitively created. His character will appeal to female viewers. Rachel Ward is luminious (as always), but her twisted desire is bound to leave normal men scratching their heads.

This little potboiler was made after Bryan Brown and Rachel Ward became a couple. They had met on the set of The Thorn Birds and continued their chemistry into real life. Following the tradition of many acting couples (Welles and Hayworth, Burton and Taylor, Cruise and Kidman, among others), they decided to make a movie together. This is always risky, considering stinkbombs like Gigli, but The Good Wife is actually a fairly good movie.
It's set in small town Australia around the 1930s or so. Brown plays the kind of role he's best at - a roughneck farmer type. His wife (Ward) is sort of resigned to her lot in life till she bumps into the new man in town, a suave drifter (Sam Neill). He gets a job as barman of the local tavern and starts bedding the local women, married or not. But he ignores Ward, much to her dismay. She becomes infatuated and makes a fool of herself.
Thrown into this mix is the subplot in which Brown gives his farmhand (and brother if I remember correctly) permission to have sex with his wife while Brown is in the other room. There's little nudity, but Rachel Ward is the hottest she's ever been, even in a naive, awkward way.

This a great movie! My wife loved it to.The video guality is very good which brings out the great cinematography.The period costumes and sets are perfect.It portrays hard working working class people in Australian in the late 1930s.I do not want to give away all of the details of the movie execept for the movie is about a love triangle that goes wrong. The final message is about love and forgiveness. Thomas Williams.

Winner of one Australian Film Institute award (Best Achievement in Costume Design) and nominated for five others (including Best Actor for Bryan Brown), this film from 1987 is a quiet masterpiece. It's strong on character development, permitting the actors to do their work without a lot of clutter. Rachel Ward (winner of Best Actress at the Tokyo International Film Festival) was beautiful as the painfully naive Marge Hills, a woman who desired romance beyond what her humdrum reality could provide. She's introduced to us on her knees at chores, with other events quick to follow that tell us she's a person whose true value is taken for granted, leaving her isolated in a practical world. Aware of an inexpressible longing, she escapes through tabloids with far-out stories of faraway places. This is only briefly but vividly touched upon before the story heats up. She makes a bad decision that drives her deeper into her dreamy notions of passon and romance to the detriment of her relationship with her husband. Sam Neill is excellent as the oily bartender Neville Gifford, hiding his disdain for women behind his smarmy urbanity. Marge's emotional decline in pursuit of this completely unlikable debaucher is hard to watch.

Seeing this only once back when it was new, I was so touched by it, I've thought about it over the span with special favor. It's not a title you see on shelves anywhere, so you're not going to get an opportunity to buy it on impulse. It was on my wish list for a long time, and I just recently decided to spring for it. Every bit as affective as it was twenty years ago, it was a very good looking film, to boot. The nomination for cinematography was definitely deserved, and made an already fine story a pleasure to watch again. I wouldn't mind seeing it in Blu-ray. It's got that look.

The DVD itself has no special features, other than the original theatrical trailer and previews. None of that matters to me, but if it matters to you, it's worth noting. It's a beautiful film, and anyone who appreciates, without being judgmental, how and why we can complicate things will find it time well spent. It was a very sympathetic portrait, and I've never stopped thinking about it.
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SPOILERS AHEAD!

Although set in the 1930s, the "depression" in Aussie-made THE UMBRELLA WOMAN (aka "The Good Wife") is actually that of Marge Hills (Ward). Bored with small town life and husband Sonny's bedroom abilities (she counts ceiling tiles while he's "having at it") Marge and creep-o brother-in-law Sugar (Vidler) brazenly ask Sonny (Brown) if they can, well.... you know... and Sonny apathetically agrees!

Dapper Neville Gifford (Neill) arrives on a train to take a barman's job at the only hotel in town. He immediately spots the umbrella-toting Marge on the street and just like --that-- she's pinned to a fence while Neville gropes the goods. Marge resists and refuses to go to a room with the steamy Gifford by indignantly declaring that "I'm a married woman!" Yeah, but to WHOM? Sonny or his brother?

Neville then sports with every gal in town EXCEPT Marge, who now pursues him like an IRS man at tax time. He tells her in no uncertain terms to go away, which only increases Marge's determination to get into his..... hotel room. After one of Neville's peccadillos goes awry he's told to leave town by a fat constable "or else." Back on the train, the sportin' man is surprised when Marge shows up and begs to be taken with him. The outraged Neville tosses Marge, her suitcase and umbrella off the moving train. She's brought home all banged up and the story ends as it began: the catatonic Marge totally bored and depressed.


Alaso recommended:
In CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS: THE DISCOVERY (1992), English-born Rachel Ward portrays Queen Isabella. (VHS only)

Northern Irishman Sam Neill appears in the Cold War thriller THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (1990) as a Russian Navy defector who just wants "to see Montana."


Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 viewer poll rating found at a film resource website.

(5.8) The Good Wife ("The Umbrella Woman") (Australia-1987) - Rachel Ward/Bryan Brown/Steven Vidler/Sam Neill/Jennifer Claire/Bruce Barry/Ned Hopper/Carole Skinner

I dont see how this movie got anything over 2 stars. It was just plain odd. The phsycho wife sleeps with her husbands goofy, childish brother because "one man is like any other" in her opinion. It is obvious that the husband (the only character that I cared even a little about)is hurt by her willingness to sleep with his brother but says OK because its what his wife wants. Then, the wife see's Sam Niell, whom I could not find one thing attractive about, and becomes obsessed with him to the point where she leaves her home and faithful, ever patient husband, and moves into town to stalk this bartenders every move 24 hours a day from across the street. The ending was almost fitting, I just wish the train had run over her and that her husband would move on to a woman who deserved him.

I agree with m.h.r. Bbettina that it is strange that this movie got more than 2 stars from other reviewers, let alone even one, in my opinion. Admittedly, I didn't see the whole thing but from what I did see, it was enough to develop some intense dislike for the characters, especially for Rachel Ward's desperate, love-obsessed character, Marge Hills, and Sam Neill's character, Neville Gifford. The plot wasn't anything to call home about but I would imagine it was developed to describe broken, unfaithful homes back in 1930s Australia or some homes in general, back in those days (and maybe for homes nowadays). The scene with the husband's brother, Sugar Hills, and the wife having sex was very strange, especially with the husband, Sonny, consenting to any of it and even listening in on it. If anything, from my point of view, I would think that the only person of any integrity and interest in the movie besides the women in town who were worried about Ward's marriage and were doing their best to intervene and help out whenever they can is the long-suffering husband. He's probably also the best-looking man in the whole movie, so it was confusing why Marge would find Neville attractive in any way, other than the fact that she was attracted to the forbidden (infidelity). So if you're not a fan of people breaking their vows and committing adultry, skip this movie. It doesn't show the ideal "good wife"; instead, it shows the image of a bad, love-obsessed, trying-to-be-unfaithful wife. In fact, maybe, it's better that everyone just avoid this movie altogether. If you want to see some healthy drama, the Lifetime channel shows some really good flicks, and plus, you can save a buck or two.