As she tries to cope with the changes in Yugoslav rural life brought about by increasing modernization, the Widow Karolina wishes she had become a mother. As difficult as things are for her, they are nonetheless much more difficult for her more-conservative and less-thoughtful neighbors.

Duša is a young dancer and dance instructor. Torn between a dominant mother, an absent father and a married lover, she is sinking into a typical crisis of the thirties, which gets worse when she starts suspecting that someone has been following her and invading her privacy.