Älskande par / Loving Couples / Liebende Paare

On a maternity ward, three pregnant women share memories of their past. Angela is an aristocratic young lady, while easy-going Agda is a maidservant, but both are expecting an illegitimate child. Meanwhile, Adèle, the wife of a tenant farmer, has already lost her unwanted baby. The reminiscences lead back to the 1914 summer solstice, revealing the relationships the three women had and how they became pregnant … Mai Zetterling brings her emancipated sensibility and a critical view of marriage to this study of love, sex, and a woman’s role. In this artistically arranged panorama of society, she exposes the first cracks in a patriarchal hierarchy arduously held together by emotionally stunted men. At the same time, she puts the focus on lifestyles and the avowal of feelings that were considered scandalous at the time – lesbian closeness, the “marriage” of two men, and the joint motherhood of two women. – Based on the series of novels by Agnes von Krusenstjerna “Fröknarna von Pahlen” (“The Misses of Pahlen”).