Tom Noonan’s The Wife is one of those great, comic journeys into the dark side of dinner parties—like Albee’s Virginia Woolf, Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party and John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation. It’s about the essential phoniness of such events, and the way in which the guises that the attendees have so carefully constructed for the evening can gradually begin to unravel, leaving all in a confused state of antagonism and cruelty. This is merely the beginning, though, and while a fine concept in general, it is one perhaps better suited to stage than to screen. Indeed, “The Wife” did begin as an off-Broadway production, but as filmmaker, Noonan has taken additional mastery of the visual realm and transformed his treatise into a sublime exploration of space, sound, color, light and the distortion of images. —http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/dt/V129/N12/02-modern.12d.html
Tom Noonan (born April 12, 1951) is an American actor and film writer-director.
Early life
Noonan was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, the son of Rosaleen and Tom Noonan, who worked as a dentist and jazz musician respectively. He has an older brother, John Ford Noonan, a playwright, and two sisters, Rosemary and Caroline.
Career
Noonan started working in theatre (appearing in the original Off-Broadway production Sam Shepard’s play Buried Child), but in the 1980s he began working in film. At 6 feet, 6 inches (198 cm), Noonan’s imposing presence is probably responsible for his tendency to be cast as menacing villains, as in RoboCop 2, Last Action Hero, Manhunter and The Pledge. His height was used for comic effect in “The Moving Finger,” the series finale of the horror anthology Monsters (several episodes of which he also directed and wrote).
In 1986, Noonan played Francis Dolarhyde, a serial killer who kills entire families, in Manhunter, the first movie… read more
Noonan more than any other director I've seen crafts tension and anxiety to the most tangible of levels, a film that feels like a masterpiece under my lens
This bizarre film tries too hard and that's exactly why it's worth watching. If you want to constantly say "WTF?" to every bit of dialogue, this film is for you.
