Wives

84 minutes • 1975 • 5.8

Wives is a Norwegian drama film comedy from 1975 directed and written by Anja Breien. The main roles are played by Anne Marie Ottersen, Katja Medbøe and Frøydis Armand.

This is the first wife film about Mie, Kaja and Heidrun. The three friends meet at a ten-year party after primary school. After the party, the girls start a three-day frenzy and run away from husband, kids and work for a few days.

What happens if girls start behaving like men? If they went on a rampage instead of going home? If they gave the bluff in shopping and washing dishes and left it to the man to shuffle the job to take care of diaper washing and babysitting problems? What if it simply became common for girls to go to town to check on men? What if there was a good tone that girls began to perceive men as objects of pleasure judged solely by appearance?

An important and fun film made in the middle of the women's year. In 1985 and 1996 came the next two wife films, where we follow the same girls ten and twenty years later.

Wives can be described as a women's political drama comedy and hit both critics and audiences in Norway when it was launched in the women's year itself. It became a sensation at the Norwegian film festival in Hamar in 1975. It turned things upside down, and a large number of accepted "truths" about the woman's place and her role in the family and society are handed out - if not to laughter, then to a quiet, petty infamous humring. It is subsequently considered one of the most popular and durable Norwegian films ever.