Convinced that he could be the world's next greatest violinist, Gilles, a clarinetist in a provincial orchestra, moves to Paris where his failure to relate to any other person, except for a sick servant and her young daughter, leads him to a psychotic vicious circle. Inspired from Dostoievski, Benoît Jacquot's elliptical and austere debut feature initially was misinterpreted as the tribute of a respectful student to his formidable master, Robert Bresson. But its heavy and static filming rather points to Mizoguchi's dogma "one scene, one shot". Sadly it ends up as a study of the rigidity of acting, from which not even Anna Karina escapes in portraying the unhappy servant who holds the narrative together from slipping into a mechanical ballet of musical and discursive sequences.

- Nikos Savvatis