Loving Couples

Three expectant mothers on a maternity ward recall their personal and sexual experiences in Mai Zetterling’s bold, subversive debut.

Mai Zetterling’s feature debut weaves together the lives of three women, each reflecting on their personal and sexual lives as they arrive at a maternity ward in the summer of 1914. Through flashbacks, fragments of their lives and loves are retold – incestuous love, masochistic love, lesbian love, destructive love. With its sexual candour, the film caused some upset at Cannes, where it premiered, but received overwhelmingly positive reviews.