Iosseliani'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. Like And There Was Light and other films, Pastorale can be understood entirely through its visuals; dialogue is rendered unimportant. The encounter between town and country is treated with characteristic wry humor, and the film's subtext is a bold look at the conditions of women in the village, as Albert Johnson writes: "The determination to convey Georgian life in the most truthful manner possible is indicated with cinematic understatement...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 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..."