The action of the film takes place during two summers and a winter. Keve is a film director whose relationship with his wife is deteriorating, and for a while he finds peace in the arms of another's wife. His leading star is attracted by Ben Carruthers, the American star of Shadows, who arrives to play a part in his film. People enter his life, float in through his doors and out again, yet he cannot involve himself.

The film has been called a personal statement; or Widerbergs 8 1/2. Some of Keve's pronouncements are characteristic of Widerberg's own opinions "I should like to be more simple without lying. I should like to make a film that was as real and as concrete as something you say across the breakfast table." In his progress towards a language of the cinema, the director, who also made last year's Festival film Raven's End, seems most convincing in those segments in which emotions are involved. In this film of a director who doesn't manage to make a film, he gives a sensitive and compassionate portrait of interpersonal relationships in today's world.