In her third film as director, Bergman star Gunnel Lindblom creates a Chekovian piece around summer-the season when light raises hopes and sun spots make memories deceptively trouble-free. Three sisters have decided to spend the holiday with their mother in the family's summer house. Two bring their husbands and children, the third, an actress, brings her lover. All bring longings which adulthood and relationships have squelched. We observe as the sisters mask and unmask and, finally, as the summer progresses, become almost imperceptibly more lighthearted. Swedish critic Elisabeth Sorenson writes, "As with Chekhov, with whom there is an obvious association here, doors are opened to many different worlds. The problems that suddenly become visible and the conflicts that arise are on the surface contemporary, but in their undercurrents, timeless. Like Chekhov, this film dwells upon the idea that life is not quite what it should be, and very seldom corresponds with our own ideas about happiness.... Gunnel Lindblom staged Agneta Pleijel's play at the Dramatic Theatre (the national theater) and then directed the film, using the same group of actors; she merely took them out into nature, into the marvelous and dangerous and intoxicating summer... This is an 'actors' film'..." (featuring another Bergman regular, Harriet Andersson).