A woman (Nathalie Baye), never named, is telling an interviewer (voice of Jacques Vrala) about a "pornographic affair" she had with a man (Sergi Lopez), also never named, who she met through an ad in a porno magazine. That man is telling the same interviewer his side of the story. The two don't know the other is being interviewed, and they will never know. Their story comes in spurts, told in flashback, with some details clear as day, some murky. They remember some incidents the same way, but some events differ. Did they meet once a week, or twice sometimes? Did it last six months, or only four? Like one's memory of a relationship long past, the specifics don't matter as much as the overall feeling. The feeling here is of love found in a strange situation, then lost because of the strictures of that situation.

I think what made this movie so wonderful was the little details. It really was like listening to someone tell about their first love, the wistful look in their eye when they wonder if things could have turned out different. The two first met at a cafe. Both were nervous. She says that she liked his smile, he liked that she was "a real woman." They have met because of the ad, where she apparently said that she wanted a partner for some unnamed sexual act. We never learn what it is, and it doesn't really matter. It is a McGuffin, Hitchcock's word for something that everyone is interested in, but it doesn't matter what it is. In the woman's words, "Who the hell cares what it was? It could be anything... It was an act of love." Which it becomes.

They have unspoken rules for their encounters. No names, no ages, no personal details at all. They are just together for the act of sex. This is difficult, because it is obvious that they are well suited to each other. They meet at the same table in the same cafe, go to the same hotel with the sensually red hallway leading to room 118, and part the same way, with a kiss. This works until they fall in love. One day, she impulsively asks if they can make love "normally." They seem poised to admit to each other that they are in love, but a series of events and a tragic misunderstanding dooms their relationship.

This is a movie that could not have been made in America. It is far too fatalistic, for one. Americans filmmakers, at least the studios, want happy endings, with lovers running through subways to find their love and fix the misunderstanding. This fatalism, however, makes it more honest and accurate. The relationship between the two characters is among the most real I have seen in movies lately. Also, an American movie would want to show you, in clinical detail, what exactly they got together to do. It is the restraint the film shows, I think, that made it so wonderful to watch.