The elderly Arnolphe has decided to marry a young woman, Agnes, whom he has fallen in love with. She is too young and innocent to realize what plans he has for her. But Agnes and Arnolphe's young friend, the dandy Horace, have fallen in love with each other. Their love is a threat to Arnolphe's attempt at getting married. Can the cunning Arnolphe stop them?
Conventions of civility among family members are severely strained by the very real breakup of the bonds between them. During a few days at a vacation home, Katha, a woman in late middle age, tries to cope with an influx of discontented, disconnected relatives. Her divorced daughter brings all sorts of people to the house, including a woman-friend accompanied by her psychotic son; the grandfather of the house is convinced he is dying and is satisfied by nothing; and some friends drop off their angry teenage son to stay with her, while they go on a long trip abroad. Her friend Emma doesn't help much with keeping a lid on things, as she is a social worker who is fascinated by the awfulness of these situations.
Holidays on the swedish east coast. Invading summer guests collide with the locals, all without inhibitions. The formerly so radical Social Democratic municipal councilor has completely lost his visions and fully accepts that the area is transformed into a tourist resort for the rich.
When a vagrant family arrives to the village Vindinge one hot summer in the 1920's, the parish is spiced up with sex and alcohol. Based on a novel by Swedish Academy member Artur Lundkvist.
"The Hangman" - The events take place in two periods of time. In the Middle Ages a group of men sit and discuss the evil at the tavern. With the hangman close by. 1930s: a dance hall where many people gathered. A jazz orchestra of colored musicians entertain. When the musicians take a break to eat, they are denied this by a Nazi.
A knight returning home with his squire Jons after a ten-year crusade to the Holy Land finds a country paralyzed by the Black Death, a newly burned witch, a blacksmith and his runaway wife, an actress, a Virgin Mary with her child and the knight's faithful wife. All approaches the realm of the dead in a single "tragicomic long dance of death". The narrator begins with: "In a church in southern Småland is our spectacle painted on the wall just to the right of the entrance to the porch. The unknown painter has on the church wall depicted a number of people in formal long dance toward death."
Devout Christians Töre and Märeta send their only daughter, the virginal Karin, and their foster daughter, the unrepentant Ingeri, to deliver candles to a distant church. On their way through the woods, the girls encounter a group of savage goat herders who brutally rape and murder Karin as Ingeri remains hidden. When the killers unwittingly seek refuge in the farmhouse of Töre and Märeta, Töre plots a fitting revenge.
When 'Vogler's Magnetic Health Theater' comes to town, there's bound to be a spectacle. Reading reports of a variety of supernatural disturbances at Vogler's prior performances abroad, the leading townspeople (including the police chief and medical examiner) request that their troupe provide them a sample of their act, before allowing them public audiences. The scientific-minded disbelievers try to expose them as charlatans, but Vogler and his crew prove too clever for them.
The Troubadour sits at a rock beside his summerhouse Sjösala in the Stockholm archipelago. He is composing a new ballad, when his son Sven Bertil interrupts him, telling him that an angry man is knocking at their door. It is the creditor Andersson, coming with a new unpaid bill to be put on the top of all the other. The Troubadour is tired of all economical problems. It disturbs the peace he needs to be able to write new songs, and without new songs he cannot earn the money he needs to pay the bills. To get peace and inspiration for his writing, he makes a quick decision to go to Buenos Aires. By phone he persuades his publisher to prepay 7000 kronor for some future book. On the little ferry from the islands in the sea to Stockholm city the Troubadour is carried away by his imagination into the fictitious world of his main character Fritiof Andersson. Colorful scenes from various songs are enacted before his dreaming eyes. In Stockholm he spends the night at the inn Gyldene Freden. ...
In an occupied country, the people rise to throw off the occupants. This includes Jens the farmer and his three sons who successfully perform sneak attacks on the invading army.
Lena Bergström works in an office and is unhappily in love with her boss, Johan Borg. She decides to quit. Borg's wife won't have any children, and when she becomes pregnant she has an illegal abortion. For some reason, Lena's father believes that it is Lena who has had an abortion.