In this multi-faceted Ingmar Bergman film, rich in dramatic and comic elements, three wives pass time in a summer house, awaiting the returns of their husbands, by entertaining each other with recollections of past marital traumas. In the first recollection, the sexually unfulfilled Rakel (Anita Bjork) shares a bathhouse, and more, with a former lover, when her emotionally withdrawn husband, an antiques collector, returns home. Marta (Maj-Brit Nilsson) recalls her love affair and marriage to a Parisian artist whose family disapproved of the relationship. The third episode is a comic classic in which Bergman regulars Eva Dahlbeck and Gunnar Bjornstrand play emotionally estranged spouses who rekindle their marriage while trapped in an elevator. Secrets of Women, which closes with the resolution of a framing tale involving the elopement of two younger lovers, shows Bergman in complete mastery of the film medium.