Helmbrecht, freshly displaced from old Germanic times to modern Germany, bursts into rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet and has to stand in for Romeo straight away. For Anna, who plays Juliet, and the assistant director Felix, the encounter with Helmbrecht’s pristine simplicity turns into a confrontation with their own world of artificiality, compensation and arbitrariness. When Helmbrecht falls in love with Anna, she is tested to the limit by his demands for sensuality, love and poetry.