The teenage Birgitta discovers the game between men and women and she turns from a shy 12-year old to a provocative 15-year-old, seducing the men she meets on the daily train ride.

In this somber, psychological drama about the conflict between a man's innermost feelings and a society that puts these feelings in a strait jacket, the mood is ruminative and depressing throughout. Alone, Viktor (Sven Wolter) heads off for his usual summer vacation to some islands where he can ostensibly look for antiques for his wife's shop in Stockholm. His marriage is a failure or worse -- he raped his wife before he left home, and he is obsessed by erotic imaginings. Once on the islands, he makes friends with a little girl whose mother is mentally disturbed and is kept by her husband in a locked room. The islanders are as tight-lipped as Viktor, and any communication is stiff and artificial. Viktor's own alienation begins to slip as he takes surprising, violent action to turn around the imprisoned mother's life -- but it does not work, nothing seems to work -- and his last actions indicate that he may not be willing to simply give up.

Arvid share the love with a young woman named Lydia, but as is customary at the turn of the century, is not love enough for a fairy tale to come true. While Arvid struggling to create the basis for their existence, Lydia's thirst for the good life leads her to marrying an older wealthy man.

Lena and her husband Sven argues in a summer cabin by the sea. She runs away, leaving Sven with his friend Pelle. A travelling projectionist turns up in the evening and shows them some films of how a relationship can look like from different perspectives.

In the 1910s, journalist Arvid Stjärnblom and painter's daughter Lydia Stille fall in love with each other.