The Substitute Wife

I enjoyed the movie. It had slow moments, I mean.. a woman taking a carriage down the trail to a city a days travel away?... I know they used it to show how much she endured... but we got that the first 2-3 times. ;)

I do a bit of Genealogy and I have a situation where a Farmer ancestor married a younger wife before the older wife died. I was thinking.. "Mormon"?... then I saw this movie... perhaps this movie actually shows a plausible reason why he married a 2nd wife before the 1st died. I have no history in stories and no written accounts in the marriage license data. Left to speculate, but the fact that my ancestor showed 2 marriages, made me go... hrmmmm... and this movie became more real life to me in my eyes.

The movie played well on many accounts. The emotions, the hardships, the triangle as it moved into play. Very well done.

Why this movie isn't screened more often I can't understand. It was delicately and sensitively played by all the actors, and incorporated a gamut of emotions from comedy to pathos, but never becoming over-sentimental, gushy, or stodgy.

The problems of males "getting spliced" on the Prairies in the mid 19th century, must have been difficult to solve at any time considering there were about ten men to one woman. For a widower with a bunch of kids in tow it would have been virtually impossible, particularly if he was a sod-buster...the lowest of the low in farming circles.

This was beautifully and amusingly solved by the dying wife, by arranging impending nuptials between her soon to be bereaved husband and a whore looking for a way out of her present predicament.

The film is strikingly, if not lavishly photographed, has an intelligent well crafted script, which makes all the points it can out of a rather thin plot, and some lovely accompanying music to boot.

It may not appeal to others as much as it did to me, but it's well worth a watch, and I also think worthy of a place in anyone's library.

When I saw this film televised on British TV, I enjoyed it so much that I tried to get a copy for 4 years. Eventually I managed to get a second hand copy - all this by a woman who has never bought a movie video in her life before.

This film is extremely sad with amazingly funny moments interspersed. Just when you feel like crying over the sadness of the situation (the wife suffering badly and dying from cancer, watching her children interact with another woman, who appears stunning, glamorous and frustratingly desirable to her husband) a character will utter something that makes you roll about with laughter.

The film isn't supposed to be realistic, it would never happen surely, but even so it makes a fine story line and does test your emotions in all directions. Don't take the film too seriously, take it as it comes and enjoy every moment. The male actor playing the husband is completely fantastic in his role. His expressions and wry comments have you fascinated from the word go.

Get hold of a copy and enjoy a non-violent, entertaining tale of sadness, friendship and honour.

PS: I'm NOT a woman who enjoys sloppy rubbish films, so don't write it off as a womans film!

this is its basic virtue - it is a different western. not only because the classic confrontations between men front to saloon are absent but for the delicate, seductive and touching answer for a basic question about the brave men . it is a comfortable film. and one who, with high care, gives a precise portrait of family life in prairie, with humor and tenderness, bitter scenes and using the poetry of small details. a film like a book from lost age. with the perfect resurrection of atmosphere and a form of romanticism who not becomes too sweet as great virtues. so, a refuge. or, just a great and profound love story.

Imagine this. In a pioneer farm in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska, a women knows she is going to die in a few weeks because of a disease she has. She sets out to find another women to replace her with her husband and their four young children. Since there are six males for one female in that part of the country at that time, she has to fetch very far... and finally comes back with an aging prostitute (prostitutes start early to be aging...) who can't stand her life anymore. There is no other way for her husband to guarantee that he will be able to keep the family farm and their four children together after she dies.

Sounds odd to you? Actually, this starting point leads to some "triangle" situations that are even more peculiar. I liked to watch how the plot developed; many situations are clearly not predictable, and you can't really guess the conclusion before it comes up.

Granted, some aspects could have been developed more deeply, and you are left wondering about the realism of the story. For instance, how could the four children possibly react to such a situation? The movie doesn't really get into that. But then, it just preserves the unity of the plot, and you have more than enough watching how this courageous wife, this outsider women and this perplexed man-and-husband interact and work their way through this harsh and unusual situation.

I think this film clearly deserves more than the 5.2 / 10 it currently displays on IMDB. I give it a strong 7.