Made as a riposte to Cassavetes’ Husbands (1970) and adopting a similarly improvisational approach, Wives is both riotously funny and tender in its depiction of an unruly friendship between three women in their 30s.

Meeting again at a school reunion, Mie, Heidrun and heavily pregnant Kaja decide afterwards to abandon all family responsibilities and spend the next few days together, drifting around the streets and bars of Oslo and describing their differing views – as mothers, as workers, as wives.

One of Norway’s most celebrated directors, whose award-winning work has screened at Cannes, Berlin and Venice, Breien is a significant voice and Wives is her most brilliant film.

This event is part of Beyond the Bechdel Test, our season throughout July focusing on the work of directors who have explored the complex ties between women that are an integral aspect of the films’ narratives, named after the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel who introduced the idea in her 1985 comic strip.