A manic bank robber aims to take back his beloved moll from rival gangsters. On a train to Paris, he meets a neurotic dreamer who assumes the mantle of the tale’s “idiot” and gets swept up in the ensuing maelstrom of love and vengeance. Together they form a mad love triangle.

An anarchic ode to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Andrzej Żuławski’s delirious vision of Paris after dark is a postmodern screech of sordid glamour and psychosexual mania. With a cropped bob à la Louise Brooks, Sophie Marceau exudes both innocence and eroticism in a role of mercurial volatility.