Trendy West Coasters Bob and Carol are determined to embrace complete openness after a weekend of emotional honesty at a retreat.

Documentary-filmmaker Bob Sanders and his wife Carol attend a group-therapy session that serves as the backdrop for the film's opening scenes. Returning to their Los Angeles home, the newly "enlightened" couple chastise their closest friends, Ted and Alice, for not coming to grips with their true feelings. Bob insists that everyone "feel" rather than intellectualize their emotions, and Carol pronounces "that's beautiful" after anyone says anything even remotely personal. Ted and Alice humor their friends, but a good-natured sexual tension is obviously at work among the foursome.—filmfactsman

Couples Bob and Carol Sanders and Ted and Alice Henderson are best friends. After attending a weekend self-help self-discovery session (Bob plans to make a documentary film on the subject), Bob and Carol feel newly enlightened, and want Ted and Alice to feel the same way. "Feel" is the operative word as they want people now to feel rather than think. The foursome each examine their feelings, and admittedly their thoughts toward their individual relationships with each other and the topic of sex when Bob admits to Carol that he had a meaningless sexual dalliance, which Carol later mentions to Ted and Alice. After pushing the sexual boundaries with others, the foursome decide that they must cross one last boundary to truly test what they they consider their new enlightened state.—Huggo