Loving Couples (1964) review

Prior to the start of World War I, three pregnant Swedish women all happen to be in the hospital at the same time, and while there, they recall their respective pasts: Adèle (Gunnel Lindblom), who's carrying a deceased infant, comes from a life of poverty, Angela (Gio Petré) reminisces over falling in love with another woman, Stanny (Anja Boman), and Agda (Harriet Andersson) remembers not just the older cretin who was trying to seduce her when she was a child but also her lavender marriage to homosexual painter Stellan (Jan Malmsjö).  As actress Zetterling's directorial debut, this does make an attempt to bring up taboo subjects (and even concludes with a live birth), but the endless flashbacks not only seem randomly inserted but halt forward progress and the characters spend the duration complaining about the opposite sex ("Men always let you down" versus "Thirty seconds of heaven for thirty years of hell").  I suspect Bergman's 1958 film Brink of Life might have been an inspiration, except the humanity is missing (among other things): the inhabitants of this largely anti-male movie - the sole "good one" isn't romantically interested in the ladies - are caustic and miserable.