The summer of the eclipse somewhere in the east. Fourteen-year-old Sibylla arrives in a sleepy town to spend her vacation with Aunt Martha. One day she falls in love like never before: with Alexander, the astronomer who looks after the old observatory. He is forty-one and thinks Sibylla is too young for love. Equally fast his son Mickey, also 14, falls for Sibylla. He knows that she must belong to him – at all costs – but she doesn’t take him too seriously.

It is as if Sibylla has electrified the small town. Everyone feels a mad yearning for love. Illiopolous, the schoolteacher, has a heart-attack whilst with his mistress. And Pjotr, the night-watchman, has a most unfortunate encounter with a weapons-grade steel ring. The arrival of a French captain in search of the sea and the secret screening of an old Emmanuelle film at the local armaments factory brings things to a head …