A brother and sister take refuge in a dilapidated lair of an strange hermit after roaming an apocalyptic city.

Pierre has come to the Canary Islands to stay with his mother, Helene, but after his father's death it becomes clear that there are too many things the teen doesn't know, and his mother is committed to ensuring her son's education. At once sexually charged, romantic and frightening, director Christophe Honoré's uncompromising adaptation of George Bataille's posthumous novel is a brave journey into dark, uncharted areas of the human soul.

"For this icily erotic fusion of flesh and machine, David Cronenberg adapted J.G. Ballard's future-shock novel of the 1970s into one of the most singular and provocative films of the 1990s. A traffic collision involving a disaffected commercial producer, James (James Spader), and an enigmatic doctor, Helen (Holly Hunter), brings them, along with James's wife, Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger, in a sublimely detached performance), together in a crucible...