The film was conceived and produced as a four-part mini-series on Swedish television with a running time of 177 minutes.

[2] The television version aired in Sweden over four weeks in April and May of that year, and was released on-demand by Cinematograph AB [sv] in 2022.

[3] Dr. Jenny Isaksson (Liv Ullmann) is a psychiatrist who has taken a temporary job as the medical supervisor at a mental hospital while her husband is in America and their daughter Anna is away at camp.

As she and her family are in the process of selling their home, she temporarily moves in with her grandparents (Gunnar Björnstrand, Aino Taube), who cared for her after her parents died when she was a child.

The experience of moving back into her old bedroom proves disturbing for her and conjures up feelings of anxiety, resulting in her first beginning to have dreams and then waking visions of a one-eyed old woman.

At a party hosted by the ex-wife of one of her colleagues at the mental hospital, Jenny meets the divorced Tomas (Erland Josephson), a medical doctor.

Nonplussed, Tomas calls her a taxi and they agree to meet again sometime in the future for a potential sexual encounter.

That night, Jenny accompanies Tomas to a concert and then returns home with him, telling him she wants a non-sexual encounter with him in which they will sleep in bed together without touching.

When Tomas attempts to comfort her, she suffers a breakdown and asks to be sent home in a cab, assuring him they'll see one another soon.

In a dream, she apologizes to herself for her suicide attempt, speaks to her grandmother, and tells herself that she fears old people like her grandparents.

Vincent Canby was highly favorable and wrote, "Mr. Bergman is more mysterious, more haunting, more contradictory than ever, though the style of the film has never been more precise, clear, levelheaded.