BREAKING FREE: THE FILMS OF ANJA BREIEN to Screen at Metrograph
Restored by the National Library of Norway, the retrospective includes WIVES, NEXT OF KIN, and GAMES OF LOVE AND LONELINESS.
Metrograph presents Breaking Free: The Films of Anja Breien, beginning September 11 at Metrograph In Theater.
The death of Anja Breien in May of this year at age 86 didn't make headlines in the United States, but tuned-in cinephiles in her native Norway—and other points abroad—would have understood the enormity of the loss. A graduate of Paris's prestigious IDHEC film school who would be championed and mentored by no less a personage than Ingmar Bergman, Breien's politically engaged, unapologetically feminist, irony-fluent oeuvre encompasses both documentary and fiction films, perhaps her best known work in the latter category her decade-spanning Wives trilogy; the first entry, released in 1975, depicting three women bailing on their domestic routines for a three-day spree in Oslo, was conceived as a rejoinder to John Cassavetes's 1970 Husbands. A rare opportunity to discover—or, in new restorations from the National Library of Norway, to rediscover—a giant of Scandinavian cinema.
Breaking Free: The Films of Anja Breien runs from September 11 to September 19, with select encore screenings to follow.
Titles include Wives (Hustruer), Wives: Ten Years After, Wives III, Games of Love and Loneliness, Next of Kin, and The Witch Hunt. US Premieres of new 2K restorations by the National Library of Norway. With the Support of the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York.
WIVES (HUSTRUER) — 1973, 83 min, DCP
First conceived of as a femme rejoinder to Husbands—and, like John Cassavetes' film, heavy on collaboration and improvisation—Wives introduces us to Heidrun, Kaja, and Mie (Frøydis Armand, Katja Medbøe, and Anne Marie Ottersen), three married former classmates approaching 30 who, reunited at a high school reunion, decide—with the help of plenty of booze—not to hurry back to the domestic drudgery that awaits at home, instead taking to the streets and saunas of Oslo, keeping up a jocular running conversation that encompasses sex, motherhood, nagging regrets, and the manifold complications of adult life. 'A charmer… Bubble[s] with a spontaneous humor tinged with rue… An accumulation of revelations.' —The New York Times
2K Restoration by the National Library of Norway
GAMES OF LOVE AND LONELINESS — 1977, 100 min, DCP
Adapted from the novel A Serious Game by Swedish author Hjalmar Söderberg, whose play Gertrud had been the source for Carl Theodor Dreyer's final film of the same title, Games of Love and Loneliness stars Stefan Ekman as Arvid, a young newspaperman who prioritizes professional ambitions over personal considerations so much as to pause his passionate romance with Lydia (Lil Terselius) just shy of wedding vows—complicating matters when the death of her father leaves Lydia in precarious circumstances and open to the prospect of a marriage of convenience. A handsomely mounted and deeply felt period melodrama spanning the years between 1897 and 1912, redolent with regret concerning opportunities not seized and roads not taken.
2K Restoration by the National Library of Norway
NEXT OF KIN — 1978, 95 min, DCP
Childless and unmarried, wealthy shipping magnate Kai Skaug has keeled over at age 54. With great expectations, his extended family—elderly mother, brother and sister with attendant spouses and offspring, assorted cousins—gather for his funeral and the reading of his will… thence to discover that this motley group, many very nearly strangers to one another, have been condemned to close collaboration, only to receive their share of inheritance if they agree to jointly operate the business that the late tycoon built as equal partners. An ensemble cast battle royale in which old resentments resurface alongside deep-buried secrets and bouts of blood-on-the-balls bickering alternate with episodes of remorseful self-recrimination, premiered in the main competition at the 32nd Cannes Film Festival.
2K Restoration by the National Library of Norway
THE WITCH HUNT — 1981, 93 min, DCP
Set in the mountains of rugged western Norway in the early years of the 17th century, The Witch Hunt reunites Breien with Games of Love and Loneliness star Lil Terselius, here playing Eli—a young woman who returns to her native village after the failure of her marriage to find the locals in the grips of a superstitious persecutorial mania, a certitude that witches dwell in their midst, and a determination, on the part of the local patriarchs, to bring their punitive powers to bear against women who don't tow the line. A film of somber beauty, winner of a Special Mention for Historical Reconstruction and a Best Actress prize at the 1981 Venice Film Festival.
2K Restoration by the National Library of Norway
WIVES: TEN YEARS AFTER — 1985, 88 min, DCP
Frøydis Armand, Katja Medbøe, and Anne Marie Ottersen return as Heidrun, Kaja, and Mie, 10 years older and another decade removed from youth's relative freedom from responsibility. Each of the trio have been molded by years of cohabitation in ways that their friends see more clearly than themselves, all determined to keep the spree going after meeting at a pre-Christmas party, hiding out from their families in an otherwise empty Malmö hotel whose manager provides them obsequious service. By turns somber and irreverent, with Nils Vogt and Jon Eikemo very funny in supporting turns, and the three leads the very definition of ensemble chemistry.
2K Restoration by the National Library of Norway
WIVES III — 1996, 76 min, DCP
A surprise 50th birthday party for Kaja (Katja Medbøe) thrown on a city streetcar by old school chums Heidrun and Mie (Frøydis Armand and Anne Marie Ottersen) turns into another conversational bender in the third entry of Breien's very singular franchise, in which the pleasure the central trio take in one another's company is very much contagious. Deferred dreams, children reaching the cusp of adulthood, aging parents on the verge of the hereafter, husbands and lovers—it's all grist for the mill in this wry, wistful, and very moving capstone to the trilogy, with Oslo's Independence Day providing a jubilant background to their final round of playing hooky.
2K Restoration by the National Library of Norway
With the Support of the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York.
