Mattias Ek

The Ex-Wife

The girlfriend Klara has recently fallen in love and wants nothing more than to hang out with her boyfriend. The mother-of-two Anna clocks how long it takes for her husband to cook baby formula. The ex-wife Vera can't let go of her ex-husband. The feature-film debuting Katja Wik presents a squib right on the money about women's tendency to, both consciously and unconsciously, limit themselves in their close relationships of two. Each frame conveys the film's theme of power manipulation and Katja Wik's neologism "victim-mentality rhetoric" (offerrollsretorik) is used by all parties as an effective weapon. Without stagnating in bitterness, The Ex-wife serves as a funhouse mirror reflecting this disturbing trait, which most of us can recognize, but which few dare to acknowledge