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- On November 30th (the date when King Karl XII died) there will usually be demonstrations by hyper-national and neo-Nazi groups, and also democratic counter demonstrations. The plot of "West Side Story" is transferred to the Stockholmian suburb Alby where many immigrants live. But the film is no plagiarism, in particular no so because many scenes have the intensive character of live transmission. The boy (Adam) belongs to a Nazi group whose racial attitude is foremost directed against immigrants with 'wrong' colour of hair or skin. The girl (Julia) belongs to a family of political fugitives from Peru. Adam and Julia immediately fall in great and reciprocal love, and there are highly emotional love scenes. Therefore Adam breaks with his group. But when his best friend is killed by Julia's brother, he kills the brother. In turn the couple is hunted by the police and Julia's relatives. Both Adam and Julia are finally murdered. The film takes no step toward reconciliation.
- Martial's mother owns a chain of supermarkets. He had spent some years in a mental hospital because of pervasive indolence. Hoping that an active task may improve his condition, he is sent to inspect one of the supermarkets. The manager had taken a large loan of money belonging to the firm. When exposed he expects to lose his job. Instead friendship develops between him and Martial who remitted the debt. A sexual relation begins between Francine and Martial, without jealousy from her boyfriend Fernand. Suddenly Martial disappears. He was called to his mother's sickbed. Francine took a job as a waitress. It is not clear if she understood that the owner of the bar would force her to do sexual services for some customers. To save Francine Fernand kills the owner. The only witness is Martial who says 'Run! Do you want to spend ten years in prison!' If he takes the murder on him, he will just return to the luxury hospital he recently came from. Only Francine saw a glimpse of Fernand and understood what really happened. The double sacrifice radically changed her emotions: she came to feel for Fernand as for an older brother and they parted.
- Amid an ongoing workers' strike, a steelworker falls in love with the daughter of his baroness landlady, even though both are already in relationships.
- Two boys are on an unplanned vacation by foot. They meet a girl who has nothing but a bikini under her coat. She says her cloths were stolen while she was bathing. She joins their company. They steel cloths for her. There is a little kissing with both but nothing that could make the other jealous. During most of the movie they enjoy minor pleasures. But occasionally when the girl is alone she has attacks of very painful emotions. In the end it turns out that she is a former child-prisoner of a German KZ-lager, who had run away from a mental hospital in bikini and coat. Some of the staff were searching for her. But when she sees them she commits suicide.
- A dramatic incident from the American Civil War when two Union soldiers and one Confederate soldier, facing each other at a battle front, agree on an hour's truce.
- In the aftermath of World War II, an American soldier falls in love with a Polish woman, and offers his help of leaving the country. But the circumstances turns out otherwise.
- Two young girls, Mitsu and Natsuko, share the same apartment. Natsuko is Lesbian and secretly in love with Mitsu. But Mitsu is heterosexual and has a boyfriend. In the hope of destroying the relation between Mitsu and her boyfriend, Natsuko seduces the boyfriend and also tries to influence him in other ways. Mitsu finds out and throws Natsuko out of the apartment. But Natsuko's love and possession remains. Secretly and never detected she follows and watches Mitsu, in particularly when she has fun with her boyfriend. She even finds Mitsu's garbage bag and eats the other part of a half-eaten apple to obtain some connection with her beloved. She is through and through permeated by a feeling of completely empty despair.
- In North Africa Dr. Walter is a very skilled surgeon but lives at a distance from the hospital. In the evening a husband and his sick wife come to his private home from far away. He tells them to go to the hospital. The wife dies during the operation. The other doctors think that Walter might have saved her. Shortly afterward a man asks Walter to come to a village to treat a very sick man. Walter goes thither in his car. The local habitants do not allow him to apply Western medical techniques, all tyres of his car are stolen, and he sees husband in this village. Walter tells him that his wife would not have died if he had timely taken her to a doctor. Walter buys a lot of coca-cola and starts walking home on his feet. He refuses husband's offer to show him a shortcut. But thrice he finds husband sitting at the road much ahead of him. Then he accepts husband's guidance = misguidance. When they have been without water for many days and Walter wishes he was dead, he wounds husband with a knife. Husband is sure to die within 24 hours without medical treatment. Then husband says that inhabited areas are found in a quite different direction. Walter starts in this direction, not followed by husband.
- As World War II and the German occupation ends, the Polish resistance and the Soviet forces turn on each other in an attempt to take over leadership in Communist Poland.
- Three episodes from three Baltic nations, all about lost love. In Estonia a political prisoner is set free. Meanwhile his best friend had stolen his girl and now defends his political cowardice: "Some of us must be left outside the prisons to pursue the political fight." - In Latvia a Russian soldier has a Latvian girlfriend. Her Latvian friends accept her boyfriend. But his two closest soldier friends beat him up, tear the clothes of his girl and threaten to rape her. The loving couple understands that they cannot continue their relationship. - In Lithuania a priest student and an Estonian stripper fall in deep love. The student's uncle is an enlightened priest who says: "I bless you whatever road you choose to go." The couple sleep together and agree to meet at the railway station the next morning and go to Estonia. But when the student comes home his uncle has died. With great pain he decides to abandon the girl and take care of his uncle's body. On the train the girl weeps because of her lost love.
- In Afghanistan, a young girl wants to go to school and learn to read and write, but is met with hostility or indifference.
- A teenager unwittingly reveals a terrible family secret to the new neighbors.
- A crematorium worker repeatedly breaks into a woman's house at night to help with housework.
- John is a shipmaster on a very small transportation boat which regularly attends a very small harbour to buy food, actually from Anna's father. She is a waitress and has a young daughter. She tells John that her name is Anita. They have met many times, but their first personal meeting is when both are swimming in early morning. John is asked to have morning coffee with Anna's family. He invites her and her child to a trip to Zoo in Copenhagen. Both have genuine feelings for each other. There are lovely three-some scenes when John is proud of "being" a father, and beautiful love scenes. Christina Schollin's naked body is cute but never obtrusive. But at that time girls were depreciated if they "gave in" too soon. So these scenes repeatedly alternate with hot misunderstandings, well-known exactly when two people with genuine feelings fear misunderstandings and try to preclude them. In the last minutes of the movie, when each has left the "harbour village" on the next day, and John has learned the real name of "Anita" and calls her from the boat, both realise without saying anything about it, that this is the beginning of a long relationship based on mutual feelings.
- Children as real human individuals with the difficulties this involves. Anna and Peiter are 11 years old. Peiter's parents are divorced. Only for one week a year does he live with his father, on the same island as Anna. The children have been friends for years. But this year (because of beginning puberty?) they have difficulty in getting in real touch. Day after day they fail. - Outside a café Peiter boasts that he can do everything. Anna tells him to fetch the thing she is thinking of. He goes inside, asks a guest to rise and brings his chair to Anna. This was indeed the right thing, and this chair will re-appear in other scenes. Another day Peiter boasts that he is not afraid of being locked up in a desolate tower for a few hours. Anna closes the lock on the outside. But her parents prevent her from going out again and Peiter remained alone in the tower for the entire night. -Finally all seven days have gone and the gap that prevented full contact is still not closed. Though when time is up Peiter is permitted to stay for one more day. And during 'the eighth day' (the Swedish name of the film) they succeed.
- A young messenger comes to a second-hand bookseller to fetch a number of books. While his packet is made ready he goes around among the bookshelves. Suddenly a book drops to the floor. He picks it up, opens it at random and reads a brief erotic excerpt. An 18-year-old girl circles around him in an unrealistic way. She asks, "Did you like it?" He does not know. She says, "Do not follow me" and leaves the shop. He disregards his errand, puts the book under his jacket and follows the girl on his moped. He finds her sitting on a bench in a part of a church where numerous urns are placed in the walls. She does not answer anything he says. Then he once more opens the book at random and reads another erotic excerpt. Then she goes around a corner, but when he immediately follows, she has disappeared. Somehow his attention is drawn to one of the name plates on the wall: "Anna Stavgård b. 1910 d. 1928". He opens the book and sees the ex libris with the name "Anna Stavgård".
- A German choir consisting of eight men is on a vacation in Yugoslavia. Most are middle-aged former Nazis. They arrive at a village populated solely by women who avoid contact with the men. 20 years earlier the Germans murdered all the males in the village. The choir tries to lighten the mood with a German song, but then avoidance is replaced by hostility. When asking to buy bread they are referred to a woman who gives them a box with 437 empty bullet shells, leftover from the murders. By using a book, "Yugoslavian for tourists" a young boy makes contact with a woman who became mentally ill then. She misunderstands his words and thinks that she will get her son back if she will bake bread. Meanwhile the men steal and slaughter a pig. The women then throw their car down a mountainside. On the next day the choir and the women reconcile. A priest from a nearby village finds a car that the men may borrow for one day. Since their own car is insured they do not report the women. When they leave, the mentally ill woman runs after them to give them the bread she has baked.
- The movie starts with a silent section of slapsticks in BLUE and white and with piano music, giving an outline of Karin's rise and fall. The rest is normal B&W movie. Karin does not belong to the nobility but nevertheless marries the mentally ill king Erik XIV and becomes queen of Sweden. The king's skilled counsellor Göran Persson wants a royal policy supporting the people and supported by it. But in relation to the nobility the king oscillates between provocative strength and unpredictable weakness. Göran arranges that some very powerful noblemen are killed. Subsequently the king tries to have them convicted of high treason by the parliament. He forgets the manuscript, mixes up all facts, and the noblemen are acquitted. But Göran speedily gathers another parliament and has them convicted. Meanwhile Erik apologises because of the unjust murders. Hence Erik is dethroned and imprisoned. Göran is executed. Karin is restricted to a castle in Finland. In the prison Erik believes that he is still the king and gives the guards presents such as all fishes in the Baltic Sea.
- At the end of WWII a German soldier who had often been ordered to execute women and children deserts and tries to find a hiding place in his native village. Almost immediately the entire village is evacuated, except for the deserter and a French girl who is a compulsive worker. Believing that the Nazi regime is gone forever they tear down all Nazi placards. The girl also steals civilian clothes for the soldier from her employer. But the next day the Germans are back and determined to find out who took away the placards. The employer dares not report the girl for fear that he would also be punished. When the deserter understands that there is no refuge and that his parents and younger sister will be murdered if the Germans find him, he shoots himself. Fifteen years later when a short-time fun-fair is built the deserter's corpse turns up, but even his parents prefer to forget what happened and to let the corpse remain unidentified.
- 'The King's Mountain Path' is a long line for wandering, with unmanned sleeping accommodation cabins at appropriate distances. It is not without dangers, in particular when narrow and shallow but speedily running creeks must be crossed. - When they were teenagers, a boy and girl wandered along this path, and had a sexual relation. They decided to meet again after exactly ten years, and at exactly this path. Both kept the promise. The movie alternates between both time periods. At the second period the boy (or man) finds the girl's name in the cabin register, and notices that she is three days ahead of him. In a later cabin she is only two, and then only one day ahead. And then he finds her - drowned in a creek. In another scene he said that she was the only one he ever liked. Because of the shock he gets paranoid ideas. In the next cabin he finds another wanderer going in the opposite direction, and accuses him of having murdered the girl. Then he continues his way. But when climbing a mountain he lays down halfway up, seemingly without any intention to go further. The other wanderer realises that he is (momentarily) mentally ill, and tries to help him down. But he makes a vigorous pull in the rope, with the result that the other wanderer falls down and dies.
- Eight-year-old Eva and her mother have a very positive CHILD-TO-CHILD-RELATION. The mother is incapable of mature behaviour when problems arise. When the mother forgets to fetch Eva at school in her car, Eva does not know the way home. Panicking and crying she just runs and is overrun by a car. The driver is obviously innocent. He is a second-hand bookseller (Etienne) and a mountain climber and has a phenomenal memory. The hospital cannot tell whether Eva will ever wake up from her coma, or will speak or move. But it is important that she is much spoken to while she is in coma. The bookseller takes upon himself the task the mother cannot do. He visits the child for hours every day and tells her Jack London's snow stories, which he knows by heart. Eventually Eva wakes up. She is still mute and will go only if Etienne holds her hands and actively walks her. She is bored by all kinds of child play but fascinated by the snowy mountains that can be seen from the hospital. Suddenly Eva deteriorates seriously and might die. Desperately, Etienne takes her on mountain climbing in snowstorm. He himself dies from frost. But when a helicopter finds the couple, Eva moves on her own for the first time since the accident.
- A young woman has an appointment with a young man to exchange a first kiss. But a purely technical film incident prevents the realization of their love forever.
- A Christian boy escapes to Israel from famine-stricken Ethiopia by pretending to be Jewish.
- A poor 22 y.o. Hungarian man who's recently arrived in Paris meets a seemingly wealthy 17 y.o. Parisian girl. They fall in love, but tragedy ensues when the truth behind the girl is revealed.
- When a woman shelters a group of girls from suffering female genital mutilation, she starts a conflict that tears her village apart.
- It has always been a firm conviction of the family that any woman who sings, will die. Now, while a girl is in France she becomes an international star. She realises that sooner rather than later her mother in Africa will learn that she sings. To solve this dilemma she goes back to her native village and arranges her own funeral, albeit with instantaneous rebirth. She is lying in the coffin while all invited guest form a queue and pass the coffin one by one. When she needs go to the toilet a boy will take her place. And then one of the guests says: How different she looks after having died. Is this an allusion to Bergman's movie "Now About These Women"?
- A young girl is both schizophrenic and abuses drugs. She has many fantasies involving fire. A medical student sends her to a senior doctor and especially instructs her to tell that he sent her. The doctor's attitude is that it is natural to feel a little depressed at this time of the year. When she asks if he is not going to make an examination he answers that that is not necessary. This is less than one week before the catastrophe. But from another corner she encounters a most sincere will to help her, viz. from a Catholic priest concerned with exorcism. It is not his fault that she is starch naked in one scene. But it cannot be a pleasure to a celibate to carry a young and beautiful female body in his arms. After a few days of exorcism she has become calm and quiet; the devils had left her. On the next day she effectively chains herself inside a car, throws the key away, pours gasoline all over, and lightens it. One would wish this was also a psychotic fantasy but it is not.
- Johan has three children with different women. Two adult daughters: Sophie and Virginie, and a young son in Amsterdam. Loïc gave Johan diamonds of a criminal origin. Her husband Simon thought they were his and murdered her. Then he set out his hunt for the diamonds and for killing Johan. The police thought that Johan had murdered Loïc and called his daughters, who had not known about each other. Afterwards Sophie receives a note to take a certain train to Amsterdam. A young boy gives Virginie the oral message "The treasure is in the trout". She immediately understands that this trout must be in her mother's freezer, unknown to the mother. Both girls take the train. Simon contacts them as a helpful fellow-passenger. The girls soon detect his aim of murdering them. In Brussels they escape the train. Virginie steals a car but is not as good at driving as at stealing (she will prove this again). But they do come to Amsterdam where a tumultuous series of events involve both threatening and real death for several of the main persons. As survivor Sophie carries out the girls' decision to give the diamonds to their half-brother.
- A female talk show host in Cairo stirs up political controversy when she focuses her on-air discussions on the topic of women's issues.
- Mother (Lily), son (Malín) and stepfather, and a poor relation between the latter two. Lily always refused to tell who was Malín's real father. But Malín gradually uncovered the secret. Lily and Ivan were very much in love but never had any opportunity to sleep together. After Ivan was drafted Lily disappeared. She was raped by the son of a communist official and became pregnant. The People's Tribunal decided that the rapist and the raped should marry. To avoid the shame of being an unmarried mother Lily resigned to her fate. But the husband did not even attend the wedding ceremony and feast. After this insult Lily refused to sleep with him. Then he sent her in a concentration camp. She witnessed a prisoner being tortured to death. Later she was confined to a mental hospital. But she made it clear to a young doctor that she would do anything for him if he helped her out. He accepted the deal. But Lily's freedom might not have lasted long if she had posed as the respectable married woman she was. Though the price of concealing it was also heavy. If she took a real job her identity would be disclosed. She could only take poorly paid homework. She had to be glad that any man would accept her. And she could never tell the truth to her son.
- Every year the most beautiful girl will be sacrificed to the Python God. When a girl named Sia is the next to be sacrificed, she hides in the house of the village idiot, a man who goes around shouting hyper-aggressive criticisms against everything. Sia is found by the soldiers but the army commander had for some time prepared a revolt against the emperor and saves Sia on the way. Will Sia reveals the terrible secret she learned about the Python God ?
- At a show a physically strong man shoots tomatoes at all girls who do not take off their clothes. When he shoots at Perrucha, the diver Mario turns out to be even stronger. A general fight starts and all furniture is broken. The owner orders Perrucha to undress henceforth. She leaves the job to sleep in the waiting room at the railway station, only to find Mario sleeping next to her. A love relation emerges. But Mario suffers an accident and is send to the hospital. His best friend Raymond tells Perrucha that he had gone away without leaving any address. Raymond also steals all post written by Mario and later tells him lies about Perrucha. She moves to another town and pursues her career. She will soon sing in Broadcasting and exclusive music-halls, and get a new lover. Mario decides to shoot her but is prevented. When he goes to her and they talk, things do not go well. He decides immediately to go down to the bottom of the sea and cut the air tube. He tells her so. When both become more aggressive, he strangles her. He believes she is dead, but when she awakens her only thought is to save him. With some of his co-workers she hasten to the diving boat - but they come too late.
- A very sad but genuinely human story. The middle-aged Icelandic woman Loa is seriously mentally ill. Finally it turns out that her husband is a latent alcoholic who submits to his addiction whenever Loa leaves him. When she is at home, she is living a normal life and taking care of her children. Sometimes she cannot stand it any longer and just runs away. During one such tour she was eventually found in England. During the tour of the present movie she has ended up in a mental hospital in France, without identification papers and apparently being mute. The young psychiatrist Cora is in charge of her and applies unorthodox methods. She is the only one who suspected that Loa might not be French. Interpol soon identified Loa and on Cora's day off she was sent home. Cora immediately flows to Iceland, where everyone including Loa's husband thinks she is a tourist wanting to see the volcano. Loa is prepared to follow Cora back to the French hospital. Unfortunately, the local doctor happens to see them on their way to the boat. He knows nothing of psychiatry and prevents what he perceives as 'criminal kidnapping'. The movie ends with a complete failure for both Loa and Cora.
- A wedding without love. The bridegroom is the owner of the greatest butcher enterprise in the town. He is also a womaniser who boasts about knowing what kinds of pants numerous girls wear. The bride is unusually beautiful. Her mother instructs her never to refuse her husband and never to argue against his side-affairs. The boy she really loves and who loves her would never do as a breadwinner. The bride's family believes that he is working far away. Her father has not taken a full bath for many years, and the bride needs much diplomacy to make him do so on the wedding day. To obtain money for the feast the bride had sold an old cow to the slaughterhouse. - Liquor is more prominent during the feast than happiness. Eventually the loving and beloved boy is found in the barn, where he had hanged himself. And the father feels deep sorrow when he discovers that the cow has gone, saying that he himself is also ready for the slaughterhouse. Finally everyone is asleep, quite a few of them because they have drunk too much. The father is sleeping in the empty crib of the cow. Only the bride is awake and lying alone, having got a foretaste of what kind of a marriage she can expect.
- A bee keeper, Spiros, travels from the north to the south of Greece with his bees to meet the spring.
- Two hostile clans had reached an artificial reconciliation which involves the marriage of a person from each family. The boy's father is away to serve the emperor, and his highly despotic mother has the absolute power. Typical of the atmosphere are the boy's words to her: "If mother was not my mother I would hate her." "If father was not my father I would hate him." The boy eventually finds a poor peasant girl and has a beautiful love affair. But soon his mother appoints this girl to be the son's concubine. As the real wife had so far born no child, if the concubine should be the first to bear a child, the wife and the concubine would exchange their status. In this situation the boy refuses to sleep with his beloved. His mother tries to whip the girl into seducing the boy, and when she fails the mother murders the girl. In this hell the boy finally finds a solution. He is the obstacle which prevents his father from rebelling against the emperor. If he did not exist the father would do so. The son decides to commit harakiri, and is much relieved by this decision.
- An American tourist, a youth gang leader, and his troubled sister find themselves trapped in a top secret government facility experimenting on children.
- Orphaned 12-year-old twins Joseph and Chloé have been on the run together. Chloé is autistic, non-verbal and fears being touched. Joseph dearly loves her and dreams she will recover if they find their parents and fight the system.
- Both Sherko (S) and Mokhtar (M) are in love with Najla (N). She is with S while M works in the dictator's police. N had just finished her medical studies in Rome, but intended to go on and becoming a specialized doctor until when she receives a letter from S saying that she must forget him. She returns to Iraq and finds S after much difficulty. He has concealed a number of sick or injured fugitives in a house but can give them neither treatment nor even cleanliness. He says that she can be shot just for meeting him. M had followed her trail and the police arrests both N and S. After N gets beaten up, a friendly officer tells her that she had done a very great service by finding S. He had already posted a report according to which she voluntarily came and wanted to work for the police. She accepts the work as a police doctor, not because of cowardice but because she can collect and pass on information to the police about those who are murdered or tortured. She stops an execution of women and children by fabricating that a child had signs of cholera and soldiers could die. Eventually M helps N and S escape, and at the frontier he distracts the guards. When caught he takes the full responsibility for the escape. He is shot. When N learns that, she returns and is also shot. Then S is alone.
- In Argentina, one daughter of patriarch Madariaga is married to a Frenchman while the other is married to a German thus leading to a crisis when Nazi Germany occupies France and some Madariaga family members fight on opposite sides.
- In Kaliningrad two Lithuanian boys meet two Russian girls. They have difficulties in finding places where they can sleep together. But this is the only problem they do solve. All four justly feel miserable because their lives are meaningless (the recurrent dull and poorly kept house façads could well be taken as a comparative symbol). In addition, everyone is so absorbed by his or her own distress and hardly capable of bothering about the anguish of the others. The three days end with a pervasive lack of contact.
- Julia may be 10 years old and lives near the Czechoslovakian border. For some time she had become mute, but she lives a rather normal life, going to school and playing with other kids. One day the other kids urge her to go into the tunnels at the border. These tunnels are military remnants from the Second World War, which the Czechoslovakian authorities have no doubt done their best to block effectively. Nevertheless, Julia comes out on the Czechoslovakian side, where a team of soldiers are building a high and solid steel fence to prevent other kinds of escape. Julia and a middle-aged soldier become friends, and he helps her to avoid being detected by the others. For many weeks she goes forth and back between the two countries. The man also promises to change the place of the fence so that her tunnel will not be closed. He knows too much about the leading officer, so the latter would never dare to protest. But whatever the reason, one day Julia finds the fence at a place she cannot cross. She has lost her best friend.
- A wealthy boy hires a poor child to carry him around like a horse.
- During WWII in Slovenia, two orphaned children seeking the imaginary Valley of Peace run into a downed black American pilot who tries to protect them from the Germans until the Yugoslav Partisans can arrive.
- A Swedish noir movie with the character of a French noir ('Quai des brumes', 'Le jour se lève'). Two worlds meet for a brief experience of happiness ended by a violent tragedy. In one world the unhappy prostitute (Ulla) finds a drunken young man (Nisse) who had previously failed in many occupations. She takes him home. Her feelings are like those for a younger brother. Nisse moves into the small apartment next to hers. It was vacant because of a complex tragedy involving the piano teacher. Ulla becomes very distressed when Nisse joins a criminal gang. - In the other world a young girl Lena's father is the captain and her fiancé the first mate on the same boat. She feels almost imprisoned by the life she is expected to live. When her piano teacher failed to show up for several weeks she goes to his apartment. This is where Nisse lives now. It is not just that Nisse and Lena fall in love. She is revived by this relationship and fundamentally changes her view of life. Suddenly she no longer perceives it as a dreadful fate to bear children etc., if doing so together with Nisse. But their love is doomed. Lena's sister informs her father and fiancé. When they try to break in in Nisse's apartment, Lena shoots both Nisse and herself.
- Sitting at a table a man and a woman are talking. Their son and daughter are also there and draw something on paper. Now and then one or the other member of the couple will say a very aggressive sentence in a very aggressive tone of voice to the other. But such aggressions are never met with counter aggression or attempt at excuse. Not even the children will give any sign of having heard them. After a silence the conversation will go on in a completely friendly tone. This pattern is repeated many times. Eventually two guards come and fetch the woman, and not until then will the spectator understand that this was a weakly visit to a woman in prison.
- Long before the events of the movie Ôki, who was approaching middle age, had a relation to 16-year-old Otoko. She got pregnant, but the child was stillborn. Their relation stopped at the same time. Much later Ôki had become a famous writer, not least because of a novel about this love story. Otoko had become a famous painter. But she had never overcome the double early trauma and had become a Lesbian. Her favourite student and beloved one was the beautiful Keiko. 24 years after the early love Ôki goes from Tokyo to Kyoto to meet Otoko. The meeting is polite with secret emotional shadows. Keiko makes a plan. She intends to seduce Ôki, become pregnant, bear Ôki's child and give it to Otoko. She hopes that Otoko may thereby get rid of her trauma. But she also wants to take her revenge on the man who had harmed her beloved. Secretly she gets acquainted with Ôki's son, invites him to Kyoto and seduces him. Then she calls his parents and tells that he had promised to marry her. Horrified they take the first plane to Kyoto. Meanwhile, she takes the son on boating, arranges an accident, and drowns him. It is close that she herself would also die.
- Martin and Frida married solely because she was pregnant. Later he would have a passionate side-affair with Rut. Rut's sexual feelings were highly neurotic because she had been sexually abused by her stepfather. When the chimney sweep came, she seduced him and afterward felt dirty and desperate. She found and seduced Martin. From the beginning she interspersed mean attacks. During the war he was drafted, but deserted. He and Rut hired a room by the chimney sweep. Soon Rut seriously stabbed Martin's hand with a fork and they were thrown out. But whatever Rut did, she could always "make it undone" by one word. Eventually they lived at the loft of an empty storehouse. On New Year's Eve Rut went to her mother and stepfather and demanded all cash the latter had. He gave her what was equal to four months salary for an unskilled worker. Martin believed she had got the money by prostitution. He left her and reported himself to the police. Rut promised to revenge herself. Martin was acquitted because a friend testified that he was mentally ill when he deserted. He and Rut reconciled, but she did not forget her promise. She left him when it would hurt most. He tried to kill himself, but was saved.
- Two strangers help each other survive a night of great loss.