After unearthing an ancient bas-relief sculpture of the gradiva or ‘woman who walks’ a young archaeologist begins to dream of the figure eluding him, while also pursuing a mysterious woman who eludes him in his waking life. Based on the novella by Wilhelm Jensen.
The movie shows a smattering of images from the story of Wilhelm Jensen's Gradiva. The subject is sublimated desire.
Rodin's sculpture The Thinker is a sentient being.
An orientalist professor researching Delacroix's North African work becomes entangled in an S& M waking dream in Morocco.