The Oscars may be over six months away but every year the buzz of who is in the running seems to start earlier and earlier. Normally the early September festivals of Venice and Toronto are launch pads for red carpet campaigns.

However one such contender for next year’s Oscars actually premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival. It’s called The Wife and it gets its UK premiere in London on Thursday at Film4’s Summer Screen event.

The buzz is not so much around the film itself, but rather the lead performance of its star, Glenn Close who will be at the premiere. In the movie, Glenn plays the quietly yet strongly supportive wife to famed novelist Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce). The news that he has been invited to Sweden to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature should in essence be good news, but it provides the spur for all sorts of relationship unravelling

At the movie’s core is Close. It’s hard to believe that this most talented of film actresses has never won an Oscar. She has been six times the bridesmaid, but never the bride. It’s also hard to believe that she didn’t win for her mesmeric turn in 1987’s Fatal Attraction. Before that movie, Glenn was known only for playing nurturing mother figures or benign nurses. Her transformation into sexy, power-dressed New York book editor, Alex Forrest was overshadowed by the bunny-boiling storyline which is now part of movie folklore. Instead the Oscar that year went to Cher for her considerably more straightforward role in Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck – in which she pretty much played Italian Cher.

So, who knows this may be the Oscars Glenn Close is the bride though there is the risk they have gone too soon. We’ll see on 24 February. In the meantime, check out the trailer for “The Wife” which is due in UK cinemas on 28 September.

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