Bergman says he felt at ease with the German actors and language in this film, having worked for years in German theater after leaving Sweden in the 1970s because of false tax evasion charges and considerable persecution. Here he takes up minor characters from Scenes from a Marriage and develops them further: a man in an uncommunicative and unhappy marriage commits a violent crime in a brothel and his motives are explored in classical Bergman fashion. In this rarely seen film, Bergman directly confronts the issue of bisexuality implicit in much of his earlier work.