Ioseliani's lyrical and eccentric portrait of rural Georgian life hangs on a slim narrative thread having to do with the visit of a string quartet to a remote village. The encounter between town and country is treated by Ioseliani with characteristic wry humor, and the film's subtext is a bold look at the conditions of women in the village. Albert Johnson writes, "The determination to convey Georgian life in the most truthful manner possible is indicated with cinematic understatement in Pastorale. Ioseliani has placed the story among the farmers in a remote area of the countryside, who speak a dialect almost incomprehensible to the average Georgian. Pastorale is very much a tone-poem. Ioseliani's sharp perceptions are constantly aimed toward sardonic juxtapositions, in the subtlest sense, to establish those wistful ironies of human behavior that exist when cultural patterns coexist behind invisible barriers. The unspoken condescension of the three girls and two boys from Tbilisi toward those around them is tempered with a resigned, polite tolerance. On the other hand, the villagers evoke the most tremendous emotional sympathy from the spectator. Like the people in Rouquier's Farrebique or Dovzhenko's Earth, they are timeless embodiments of all humanity.... The village is not at all cozy-cute, but unflinchingly grubby; the mud, poverty, insouciant pigs, goats and chickens, plus the eternal outhouse, are just there-the labor, too, for the women do everything without modern conveniences..."