The Exchange

Erin Kolirin’s quirky black comedy The Exchange is a winning follow-up to his charming 2007 debut, The Band’s Visit. Doctoral student Oded teaches physics and seems to have a routine and simple life with his architect wife Tami. One day he forgets his orange binder at home and returns to their apartment. Inside he is surprised to find his wife napping, but stranger still is how unfamiliar his home appears to him at a time when he is not usually there. In that instant he becomes a sort of intruder in his own life, telling his wife that it was like coming home sick from school. Intrigued by this new perception, he begins to see everything around him with a sense of wonder and detachment, noticing details that he normally overlooked. Like a scientist conducting research, he begins to purposefully break his routines, even to the point of spying on his wife. His new behavior borders on the obsessive when he meets a neighbor who seems to share his predilections. Together they embark on a bizarre series of social experiments that verge on the ridiculous and end in quiet despair. Along the way, Oded questions his marriage, his job and his very existence.