The life and times of the Scandinavian artists' colony who lived in Skagen on the Danish coast during the 1890s. Not so much a biographical account, rather a portrait of a way of life. The painters became famous for the way they used the light in their work, and this has also been mirrored in the cinematography.

In this Danish suspense film, the foibles of the psychological helping professions are wryly surveyed. A woman has murdered her husband. That's clear enough. Now the woman is in a psychiatric hospital because it seemed clear to the judges that she was not fully competent. Her doctor, who is helping her a great deal, has problems of his own. First, he is against the cookie-cutter treatment practices of his hospital, second, he is on shaky mental ground himself. Then he violates his therapeutic ethics by carrying on an affair with the woman he is treating.

Two men disappear at the same time, with one of them committing suicide using dynamite. The police try to figure out which one died and what happened to the other.