The core of the movie is derived from the studies that observed women like macho men while ovulating and caring men otherwise. Even though it's about a couple, the main and the only protagonist is a woman, Cindy, struggling in a dilemma posed by nature and nurture (patriarchy).
Only Cindy has all round personality in the movie and all others, the husband, the father, the doctor and the ex-lover have one-dimensional personalities perfected in feudal ethos. In fact, her husband is a caricature of non-feudal.
The husband doesn't defy any stereotypes of a feudal man. He doesn't have an identity of his own. He's just non-feudal. He has only love because feudal man has been characterized by only lust. He adopts a macho man's child and brings her up as his own but cannot convince his wife to have a child of his own. During intercourse, he shows inverted power relations instead of mutual and thus equal action. He doesn't have any ambitions. He takes the hit but doesn't attack. He is simple. However, his developing drunkenness when love appears to evaporate, gives us a clue he is not new age man but the one always existed among us as an anti-thesis of feudal men giving some kind of validity to them. Most likely he emerges as the cliched 'gentle giant' of the working class.
Cindy on the other hand is a far more complex character. She had the potential to become part of the middle class had she become a doctor but ended up in the working class by becoming a nurse. The main reason being her acceptance of a feudal man's sperm. We have no indication of either religious or ethical considerations there. In fact, the unplanned pregnancy could be the result of a rape too if we go by certain definitions. So, she was held back by patriarchy. However, she isn't a feudal woman but feudal woman in transition. She did break-up with her feudal boyfriend. We sense her individualism waking up when she was aghast that the doctor liked her for her body and not for the abilities. However, at the same time she can't accept her husband's lack of ambition and refusal to hit back. Her advice to him, 'be a man'. It's in these words we are left with the confusion what it is to be a man or a woman liberating ourselves from feudal ethos.
We don't get any answers in Cindy's circle for that question. Her father, ex-lover and the doctor are representatives of feudal men. Even though, she ends up being a working class woman, her individual class is middle class but there are no middle class men around her who could be defined as non-feudal.
Ultimately, the movie tries to explore what is to be a man or a woman in post-feudal societies. However, drawback of the movie is it's only a woman who is struggling to define herself but men have defined themselves as they have always been in feudal societies.
