In 1923 London, socialite Clarissa Dalloway's (Vanessa Redgrave's) well-planned party is overshadowed by the return of an old suitor she had known thirty-three years earlier.

After Queen Elizabeth I commands him not to grow old, a young nobleman struggles with love and his place in the world.

A family spends their last summer at the seashore, before personal tragedy and the outbreak of World War I destroy their world.

Based on `The Waves' by Virginia Woolf. The thoughts and feelings of six people are examined as they prepare for a farewell dinner for a mutual friend, Percival, who is leaving for India.

This first film already contains many of the elements that reappear in Ulrike Ottinger's later films: an extraordinary woman, an unusual country and a chain of magic transformations that gives rise to a series of eccentric character depictions. This notion of transformation, taken from Virginia Woolf's Orlando, which contains the idea of death and destruction as well as resurrection, remains an important theme.