Pierre Richard

Two lighthouse keepers try to maintain their sanity while living on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.

Racing driver Jimmy meets French model Annette at the racetrack, who is working in Amsterdam for a while. A romantic relationship develops between the two, but they are unable to continue their mutual feelings of love. Annette realizes this first and feels compelled to return to Paris. Now that he no longer has Annette, Jimmy loses control of himself, which makes him unsuitable for his work as a racing driver.

This comedy brings Pierre Richard and Michel Piccoli together onscreen once again. In the story, former professor Henri Toussaint Piccoli has been locked away in a psychiatric ward for some years for trying to strangle his wife when he found her in bed with another man. Now she has a terminal illness, and wants some sort of reconciliation with him. His therapist (Richard) decides to permit him to visit with her, provided he comes along. Except for his wide mood swings and occasional outbursts of lewd muttering, the professor "passes" for sane fairly easily. Not so the psychotic (Dominique Pinon) who stows away in the psychiatrist's car, who constantly calls attention to the other two.