Anja Breien’s breakthrough film Wives shamelessly took on the premise of John Cassavetes’ film Husbands, made four years earlier, turning gender roles upside down in the spirit of the 70s. Three thirty-something friends, Kaja (Katja Medbøe), Mie (Anne Marie Ottersen), and Heidrun (Frøydis Armand), meet after years at a school reunion. In the afterglow of the celebration, they make a sudden decision to escape from their husbands and family responsibilities. What follows is of course a shameless three-day bender. The women roam the streets of Oslo, hopping from bar to bar, as middle-class niceties and deeply ingrained roles slowly crumble, and the conversation deepens into the women’s true feelings about sex, femininity, and family relationships.
Hugely successful at the box office and a point of contention among critics, Wives was a true landmark of feminist filmmaking of the mid-70s. For some, it’s largely improvised, often coarse, humor and the blatant irony of the story were simply too much. Now, five decades later, Wives feels like a delightful discovery. Significantly the film launched Anja Breien’s nearly five-decade-long career among Norway’s most important directors. Always sharply reflecting the spirit of the current decade, Breien later continued to explore the mishaps of the three friends with two sequels.
Milja Mikkola