Set in a Hungarian mental institution in 1900, this dark and intense drama follows a dangerous affair between Jozsef Brenner (Ulrich Thomsen), a morphine-addicted physician, and Gizella Klein (Kirsti Stubo), his profoundly disturbed patient. Brenner, who struggles with writer's block, is drawn to his deranged patient because she has the opposite problem: she cannot stop writing for a moment. While at first his interest is professional, it soon turns into a personal obsession that cannot easily be exorcised.