A young woman faces an arranged marriage imposed by her aunts as the hour of her suitor’s arrival approaches. Adapted for television from Hjalmar Bergman’s one-act play, the film uses intimate staging and close observation to explore coercion and quiet despair.

Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.