***Translation sample available***

An estranged husband and wife decide over the weekend to split up, but then their plan goes awry. They awake Monday morning horrified: Each one is in the body of the other. This not only impedes their imminent separation but also throws a slew of highly bonding practical considerations right into their path of destruction. Of the two, she’s the breadwinner and in the immediate must get her body, with him in it, off to work. From applying makeup to her/his face and getting herself/himself dressed to coaching her husband on how to behave at her office and at the big lunch date, her first day at home as him, a frustrated novelist, will not be without its worries. They resume their lives as a couple but find that with all that they must now share, the distance that has grown between them is becoming harder and harder to maintain.

At first he finds much not to like about his wife’s life: riding crowded subways, spending the day in an air-conditioned office building, and having to take lecherous mediocre authors out to lunch. She in turn loathes his flabby body and abhors the daily chores of his life, so she decides to get him back into shape with karate classes. As this husband and wife slowly understand better what being the other means, a new curiosity and appreciation grows. With an adolescent secrecy, and feigning disinterest, they poke and probe their new private parts. Lust—but for what they’re not quite sure–turns into obsession, and in a quite unexpected manner, they each become partners in the sexual life of the other. The gap that had already begun to recede from between them fills with love, lust, and life.

Mari et femme is a ceaselessly entertaining and subtle exploration of what it means to be a couple.