The film is about the marriage of a gynecologist named David and his wife Marianne.

A Lesson in Love received generally positive reviews from film critics.

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports 100% approval (based on six critics), with an average rating of 7.2/10.

[1] On the film's U.S. release in 1960, Bosley Crowther opined in The New York Times, that its subject "...is the complexity of love...It is a subject that Mr. Bergman expanded in his subsequent "Smiles of a Summer Night," with more wit and satiric implication.

But, for a warm-up, he got off nicely here...Mr. Bergman plays around with it in such a clever and thought-provoking way that the emotional dilemma implicit in it has humor, wisdom and charm...And, as in all of his pictures, Mr. Bergman has used a cast that seems to act with inspired understanding—which means, of course, sympathy with him.