Gunnel Lindblom's film about Berta, a young, educated clerk, works to support her family. Her mother, Mrs. Bark, was previously heir to an estate, but the family has been financially ruined by her husband, Mr. Bark, and now lives in a small Stockholm apartment. Mr. Bark's creditors threaten to collect on his gambling debt, and he schemes to get his wife to release the small fortune that remains in her name so that he can avoid bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Lissi, Berta's sister, has arrived from the countryside to surprise her husband Wilhelm, only to discover that he is having an affair. Berta hatches a plan to permanently pull her mother's fortune out of her father's control, and it is almost complete when Mr. Bark bullies his wife into releasing the money to him. Lissi, coaxed by Wilhelm, returns to her husband, and Berta is left trying to navigate a way forward for herself while the "true women" in her family have succumbed to the power of the patriarchy.
The film is based on a play Sanna kvinnor (1883) by Anne Charlotte Leffler, one of the pre-eminent authors of modernism’s breakthrough. She was known for socially critical dramas and short stories, which focused largely on gender, power, eroticism and the right to own property.
Director and Screenplay: Gunnel Lindblom
With: Agneta Ehrensvärd, Margaretha Byström, Axel Düberg
Music: Monica Dominique
Digitally renovated. English sub-titles.