The Girls 1968

Liz, Bibi Andersson, Marianne, Harriet Andersson, and Gunilla, Gunnel Lindblom, are three actresses hired to perform in a touring production of Lysistrata. Each woman faces challenges leaving their homes in order to tour. Marianne has left her married boyfriend and finds it difficult to leave her toddler in the hands of babysitters as she goes on tour. Liz’s husband is having an affair and wants her to leave while Gunilla, a mother of four young children, is urged not to leave by her husband who wants her to stay at home to help with the children.

Throughout the tour, the women meet with polite indifference: audiences either fail to grasp the play’s meaning or grow bored. After one performance, Liz asks members of the audience to stay behind to discuss the meaning of the play, but when she speaks about the importance of women they do not react; a male member of the company treats it as if it were just another part of the show and ushers her offstage. Liz’s stunt attracts attention from the press, yet because she cannot pinpoint a single incident that sparked her outburst, the coverage remains dismissive.

Later all three leads go out to dinner and talk over the problem of no one relating to the play, wondering if perhaps it would be better to hold a woman-only show. At dinner they are bothered by several men and when they turn down the men’s advances the men become hostile and only leave after Marianne threatens them.

On the road, a friend of Liz’s husband urges her to come home on behalf of her husband, saying he needs a wife to properly support him and his work. Liz argues that she is tired of putting her husband first, but her husband’s friend argues that his work is more important than hers. She stays on till the end of the tour.

The tour finishes and the women return home feeling as though no one is willing to change, but they have at least made people more aware of the misery of their lives. At a party celebrating the end of the play Liz tells the company that she wants to get a divorce.