Actor Bryan Brown and actress Rachel Ward were married in 1983 about four years prior to this picture.
In an interview with Signet on 12th April 1996, director Ken Cameron said: "I think the reason that it didn't work was that there was something very difficult to understand about the relationship between Bryan [Brown] and Rachel [Ward]. They were at the height of their public relationship, very well known as a happy couple. It was terribly hard to cast them as a couple who had some unstated problem in their marriage because everything in fact denied that. So it was hard to understand why she would run after the barman when Bryan was there, because Bryan is quite iconic and quite wonderful as an Australian country man... Without wishing Sam Neill away, because I think he's terrific - it might have worked better had Bryan been the barman... I think that this was an example of how you can cast a film with great excitement, get all these wonderful actors but, at the same time, in the very act of casting, you're blighting it or preventing the drama from emerging successfully".
Both the Australian DVD sleeve notes and the prologue before the film on its DVD both feature the following: "NOTE: For THE UMBRELLA WOMAN'S release in the United States the title was changed to THE GOOD WIFE. In order to present the film on this DVD the best available source materials the US DVD master has been used and carries the title THE GOOD WIFE at the head of the film."
First cinema movie collaboration of actor Bryan Brown and actress Rachel Ward who both previously had worked on Les oiseaux se cachent pour mourir (1983) for television.
This is the only produced screenplay of playwright Peter Kenna whose name prefixes the film's title in many versions.