The old and overcrowded penitentiaries are just a memory. Inmates now serve their sentence in a state of deep sleep that renders them harmless, and has drastically reduced recidivism. Until one day, a psychologist in charge of monitoring the mental state of inmates finds himself confronted with a prisoner over whom he’s lost all control.

Stanislas Hassler blazes the development of modern art in his gallery, packed with works of surprising shapes, colours and textures, and where exhibitions turn into media events. Gilbert Moreau is one of the artists whose sculptures are on display in the gallery. His wife, Josée, is intrigued by the stern Stanislas, who devotes his free time to photography in an apartment that highlights his sophisticated artistic tastes. But besides enlarged pictures of calligraphic samples, Stanislas is amassing a collection of photographs that reveal a disturbed character. So why would Josée endanger her mature relationship with Gilbert for the morbid observation of Stanislas’s hidden personality?