A copy of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula and Jean Ray's novel Malpertuis appear around the country estate, throughout the film - both books concerning small groups of people enacting parasitic relationships in isolated locations. When Daniel is stamping his foot, Haydée is trying to read the final chapters of Dracula.
During the shooting of the film, Éric Rohmer was able to devise several working principles: improvisations with his cast that would be codified into a script (leading to all the actors being credited for collaborating with the dialogue); extensive rehearsals followed by very few takes (a miserly 1.5:1 shooting ratio was achieved); a discreetly spying, unostentatious mise-en-scène composed mostly of fluid long shots, capturing the vacationing characters awkwardly sharing the space of someone else's villa, whiling away the summer days and nights in a mixture of lassitude and tension.
This is the fourth film in Éric Rohmer's series of "Moral Tales" (Contes Moraux), but the third to be released. Meine Nacht bei Maud (1969), the third film, was the fourth to be released.