Malmö, 1943. The war arrives as news from somewhere else, and fifteen-year-old Stig sits in a classroom like any other boy his age. His teacher, Viola, starts a sexual relationship with him. Bo Widerberg puts that on the table early and spends the rest of the film on the arithmetic of it: an adult holding authority over a child in her care, and a pupil with no standing to set the terms.

Widerberg wrote and directed, and cast his own son, Johan Widerberg, as Stig opposite Marika Lagercrantz as Viola. Tomas von Brömssen, Nina Gunke and Karin Huldt fill out the adults around them. It was his last film, and the register stays sober: a provincial city in wartime, a school, a marriage, and a boy being used by the woman who teaches him.

The Swedish title comes from the hymn "Den blomstertid nu kommer", which schools sing before closing for the summer holiday. Widerberg sets an end-of-term children's song against a teacher's misconduct and leaves the gap between the two open. The film suits viewers who want period drama that names what it depicts and treats the imbalance as its subject rather than its backdrop.