Film screenwriter Jake Armitage and his wife Jo Armitage live in London with six of Jo's eight children, with the two eldest boys at boarding school. The children are spread over Jo's three marriages, with only the youngest being Jake's biological child, although he treats them all as his own. Jo left her second husband Giles after meeting Giles' friend Jake, the two who were immediately attracted to each other. Their upper middle class life is much different than Giles and Jo's, who lived in a barn in the English countryside. But Jo is ruminating about her strained marriage to Jake, with issues on both sides. Jo suspects Jake of chronic infidelity, she only confronting him with her suspicions whenever evidence presents itself. And Jo's psychiatrist believes that Jo uses childbirth as a rationale for sex, which he believes she finds vulgar. These issues in combination have placed Jo in a fragile mental state. They both state that they love the other, but neither really seems to like the other much. As Jake and Jo prepare to move back to the English countryside in a new house within sight of Jo's old barn, both Jo and Jake come to their own unspoken individual conclusions of whether their marriage can withstand these strains, and if so what type of marriage it is destined to be. 如何含蓄表现人物苦闷情绪。《爱撒谎的人》《太太的苦闷》《养不起老婆的男人》《吃南瓜的人》The Pumpkin Eater（1964）。婚姻的实质就是孤独和苦闷。 乔（安妮·班克罗夫特 Anne Bancroft 饰）是一个感情之路非常不顺的可怜女人，她经历过两次非常失败的婚姻，并且有五个孩子需要抚养。在这样的情况下，她邂逅了名叫杰克（彼得·芬奇 Peter Finch 饰）的男人，再一次的，乔坠入了情网，但是这段感情给乔带来的并不是快乐和救赎，恰恰相反，乔陷入了深深的抑郁中无法自拔。 乔怀孕了，虽然她十分想生下这个孩子，但是杰克强烈反对，为了挽救这段濒临破碎的感情，乔忍痛打掉了孩子。可即便是这样，乔也没办法阻止杰克一步一步的离开自己，看着眼前这个日渐陌生的男人，她不知道自己的未来该何去何从。
