This bittersweet film from Jean Renoir, based on a story by Guy de Maupassant, is a tenderly comic idyll about a city family’s picnic in the French countryside and the romancing of the mother and grown daughter by two local men.
A woman, played by Maya Deren herself, returns home, falls asleep, and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and a complete mismatch with the objective view of time and space, the woman’s dark inner desires play out on-screen.
