- Karin: Women should talk to each other more openly and more often. We should share our experiences and comfort each other. We shouldn't be affected by men's silly need for prestige and secrecy.
- Rakel: I'm not your property that you can treat as you want.
- Karin: Women are women. We all have the same bodily equipment, more or less perfect.
- Fredrik Lobelius: We should have ended up in broken elevators more often during our 13-year marriage, you and I. What do you think?
- Paul Lobelius: The main thing is that they do something they think is forbidden.
- Rakel: We'll have to try to comfort each other.
- Kaj: The things you say, little Rakel. I can tell by your nose that you're lying.
- Rakel: I've come to realize that Eugen is my child and it's my duty to take care of him. I feel sorry for him. He suffers greatly from what he calls his meaninglessness. Yet, he means everything to me now.
- Fredrik Lobelius: If I can confess something to you, Karin, it is that the worst thing I know next to snakes, rats and communists is to be trapped in a very small space. I'm actually sweating a little.
- Karin: The strong displays a weakness. Hooray. Hooray.
- Karin: Can't we kiss each other in the cover of darkness?
- Fredrik Lobelius: Each of us lives our own lives. We raise our children. We have our home together. The rest is complete freedom., complete discretion. C'est tout.
- Maj: You can't be serious. Are you really going to change just because your boring husbands are coming home tonight?
- Annette: We're sitting around waiting on our men and we're all nervous because we haven't seen them for weeks. And then we're all going to be here on vacation for a few days. All of us together. Without privacy for our personal sorrows and problems. It wasn't be a vacation for me.
- Rakel: Dear Annette, we had the impression that you and Paul had a good relationship.
- Annette: Of course we do. We say, "Good day," Good-bye," "Good morning, darling" and "Good night, sweetie." "How's your day been?" "Tonight it's Bergman's." "We're going to the Pyrenees this year." "I'm buying a camera." But we're never close to each other. There's never any intimacy or contact. Sometimes I wish he would beat me.
- Rakel: Can't you speak with him?
- Annette: It wouldn't work. He'd only get embarrassed.
- Maj: Cheat on him.
- Rakel: Hush, child. You've read too many tabloids.
- Annette: I have my life. My only life. And that's my life with Paul. I'm sure we loved each other as eagerly as Maj and Henrik do now. But what have we become? Two bowing Chinese.
- Rakel: He's writing his thesis. Antiquity studies.
- Kaj: Colossally interesting.
- Kaj: Don't look like you think I'm going to seduce you.
- Rakel: Seduce? You? Me?
- [laughs]
- Rakel: I'd like to see that.
- [Kaj kisses Rakel]
- Rakel: You're not at all shameless.
- Kaj: You're just like when we were kids. You're just as soft and indulgent. Just as pretty and fragrant. And just as flushed and irritated afterwards.
- Rakel: Kaj, we have to know what we're doing. We have to take responsibility. We're not just dogs in heat.
- Kaj: Do you remember the time in our childhood when we laid here in the sun completely naked and compared each other's shape?
- Rakel: When you grabbed me up there in the room and pressed your head against my stomach it was so strange. You have to be nice to me.
- Kaj: I'll be just like you want.
- Rakel: I'm going to tell Eugen that we cheated on him today.
- Kaj: Was that necessary?
- Rakel: You think I enjoy sleeping with you, don't you? Because you're a nice, talented and considerate lover. But let me tell you something, Kaj. You disgust me. And you're not a good lover. Do you know why? You only love yourself. Only yourself and nobody else in the entire world. Only yourself.
- Kaj: If I'm disgusting, so are you, my dear Rakel. You needed that little ecstasy that Eugen always denied you. And I gave it to you.
- Eugen Lobelius: You have destroyed my entire existence. You, the only person I trusted. You have deserted me for another. You maybe also told certain stories from our sex life. To save yourself and your morals. Is it my fault that you become stiff and...
- Rakel: That's beside the point, Eugen.
- Eugen Lobelius: Beside the point? Oh, no. Don't try to weasel out of this one. Let me tell you something, before I met you I was with other women and I was considered a pretty good lover. And it's damn strange that just you - Well, whose fault do you think it is?
- Rakel: Think about it. Don't do anything you might regret. Don't do anything you might regret, Eugen.
- MC at the nightclub: Attention. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm pleased to announce a contest which should be as interesting for the audience as for the contestants. We shall see if amongst you there is a woman who can hold a two-franc piece between her thighs.
- Martin Lobelius: [singing] Marta is a blossoming tree, She is a bright little fish, Why are your eyes so sad, Marta?
- Fredrik Lobelius: I think you could have worn more clothes on an evening like tonight. I was terrified that the décolletage would fall into the ice cream. Most likely you were half-naked just to annoy me.
- Karin: How did you guess?
- Fredrik Lobelius: At your age, you should wear more clothes.
- Fredrik Lobelius: What about his concubine?
- Karin: I ran into her on Sturegatan Street yesterday. She looked ready to give birth.
- Fredrik Lobelius: What?
- Karin: Give birth. You know, that indisposition that happens to women on occasion.
- Fredrik Lobelius: I'll be damned. I thought she looked decent.
- Karin: Her reputation is supposedly not the best.
- Karin: At your age, dear Fredrik, one easily confuses the characteristics of young attractive women. It supposedly has something to do with internal secretions.
- Karin: Did you hurt yourself?
- Fredrik Lobelius: No! But my cigar and my glasses are destroyed. That's what happens when women fix things.
- Karin: Did I build the elevator?
- Fredrik Lobelius: The builder's mother was most likely a woman.
- Karin: Sweetheart, don't be sad. I'm sure they'll save us before we starve to death or start eating each other.
- Karin: Don't you know that women really blossom after 35?
- Fredrik Lobelius: No. I refuse to know it.
- Karin: Too bad. We could have a lot of fun, you and I.
- Karin: Just think how nasty women can be.
- Karin: I've forbidden you to wear short underwear.
- Fredrik Lobelius: It feels nice when you rub. You were a good physical therapist once upon a time. You'll get to massage me in the mornings like before.
- Karin: Thank you, dear God. Does it feel better now?
- Fredrik Lobelius: People shouldn't keep asking each other for forgiveness and all that nonsense.
- Karin: A little dalliance in the elevator. It'll be something to tell the grandchildren.
- Fredrik Lobelius: No. Be quiet.
- Karin: I'm not going to say a word.
- Marta: You're just a little girl.
- Maj: No! I'm not a little girl! I know what I want and I can take care of myself. At least as well as you other women.
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