Martin is a philosophy teacher in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Lacking direction or purpose in his life, he initiates an affair with Cécilia, a young artist's model who might have killed her former lover.

Martin is a middle-aged philosophy teacher in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Lacking direction or purpose in his life, he initiates an affair with Cécilia, a young artist's model who might have killed her former lover with the intensity of her sexual appetite. They share a purely erotic relationship as an intellectual abyss separates them. Before long, he needs to possess her and cannot resist a sharp descent into violent jealousy.

Middle-aged Martin confused and irritated from the onset of mid-life crisis, has clung too stubbornly to his belief in platonic love and its incumbent celibacy. He inadvertently meets Cécilia who is rumored to have killed her last lover (a painter) with her voracious sexual appetite. Martin, a philosopher, questions everything he experiences; Cécilia, a seemingly indifferent older adolescent, questions nothing at all. Martin's crisis slowly and agonizingly crescendos, in the face of her confounding simplicity, during their brief and bizarre affair.—Blithe Spiritus <[email protected]>