The late Andrzej Zulawski's final film, a literary adaptation suffused with his trademark freneticism, transforms Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz's novel of the same name into an ominous and manic exploration of desire.

Witold who has just failed the bar, and his companion Fuchs, who has recently quit his fashion job, are staying at a guesthouse run by the intermittently paralytic Madame Woytis.

Upon discovering a sparrow hanged in the woods near the house, Witold's reality mutates into a whirlwind of tension, histrionics, foreboding omens, and surrealistic logic as he becomes obsessed with Madame Woytis's daughter Lena, newly married to Lucien.