Cries and Whispers

It's the turn of the nineteenth into twentieth centuries in Sweden. The interrelationships between four adult women - sisters Agnes, Karin and Maria, and Agnes' longtime housemaid Anna - are presented. Karin and Maria, both married, have returned to the family country manor estate, where they stay on occasion as they lead their lives, to watch over Agnes, who is on her deathbed, suffering in pain from the final throes of her illness. Karin and Maria's return is despite the three sisters having an unspoken strained and standoffish relationship with each other. Cold and stern Karin is all repressed emotions as she hides behind a proper decorum, those repressed emotions including a hatred for her diplomat husband, Fredrik. Self-absorbed Maria is the quietly but calculatingly sexual one, her slight smiles and furtive glances only noticed by her lovers, who include David, Agnes' doctor. In her spontaneous cries of pain for assistance, Agnes calls out for Anna instead of her sisters. Agnes does call out for her sisters when she has the forethought to think about what is happening. Devout Anna, who has experienced pain herself in that her daughter died years earlier in infancy, is the only one who provides unconditional love and support to Agnes, both in comforting her in life and also in death. The focus on Agnes provides the opportunity most specifically for the three sisters to confront their relationship demons with each other.