An author's attempts to find a quiet environment to write a book are disrupted by conversations between a psychiatrist and his patient - whose obvious despair prompts her to re-evaluate aspects of her own life. Woody Allen's drama, starring Gena Rowlands, Gene Hackman, Mia Farrow, Ian Holm and Blythe Danner.

Marion is a woman who has learned to shield herself from her emotions. She rents an apartment to work undisturbed on her new book, but by some acoustic anomaly she can hear all that is said in the next apartment in which a psychiatrist holds his office. When she hears a young woman tell that she finds it harder and harder to bear her life, Marion starts to reflect on her own life. After a series of events she comes to understand how her unemotional attitude towards the people around her affected them and herself.