Irene is a modern, liberal woman. She is the press officer of a film company. She no longer loves her husband but prefers not to leave him for the benefit of their daughter. Irene has an affair with Ebbe, a journalist, whose keen affections nevertheless irritate her. After its screening in Venice in 1971, "Dear Irene" was very enthusiastically received. "New Statesman" called it "a movie attacking the new, sexually liberated society of Denmark from an undoctrinaire Marxist standpoint. Thomsen’s people have achieved freedom; indeed they talk about almost nothing else. They sleep around, they are unillusioned. Flesh slaps sullenly on flesh, and after lovemaking there is always a bottle of beer to be opened, an appointment to be kept, a husband and a child to return to. Isolation is a condition accepted as inevitable as life itself." The film is an authentic document of a change in epochs. Christian Braad Thomsen: "I think it is the the only Danish feature film about the 1968-revolution, which was shot when it took place."