Two women and a little boy—archetypical twentieth-century figures in transit or in exile—journey by train to the mysterious city of Timoka, where a heretofore unheard language is spoken and where signs of war or preparation for war keep cropping up. The women and boy stay in a large, spooky grand hotel and play out episodes of sexual experimentation, radical self-searching, and a struggle with disease and madness. Bergman creates a wonderfully claustrophobic atmosphere and invents perverse and liberating surprises for both the characters and viewer as the film unwinds. Ingrid Thulin gives a shattering performance as the older of the two women, a professional linguist.