The plot follows a young woman who convinces her boxer boyfriend to accept a bribe to tell a lie that discredits a local politician.
When the boyfriend is murdered, she is racked with guilt until she meets the killer and plans to remake him into the image of her slain lover.
[1] In a French speaking port in Northern Europe, Laure, an aimless young woman, goes to see her boyfriend, Samson, a washed up boxer.
Members of the campaign of the politician in question, informed of the impending interview and outrageous revelations, contact Samson and Laure and made them changed their minds, offering them an equal amount of money if they just leave for a trip abroad.
Laure buys the train tickets and hides the money at the station's lockers, but prevented by Samson they go separate ways.
Walt, the editor of the newspaper that was going to run the scandalous revelations about the politician, gets involved in Samson's murder investigation.
Looking for Laure and a place to hide, Samson's killer (his name is never given) holes up with Nelly who taking him for a client, offers him her specialty: la radical, that includes a dance and song number, but he is more interested in having something to eat.
The day of the elections, while the results are given, in the midst of celebrations the couple manage to escape on a liner evading the gangsters, when these by mistake, shot Walt, instead of Samson's killer.
Téchiné took the title of his film from the work Barroco (1974) written by Severo Sarduy, a Cuban poet and cultural theorist exiled in Paris.
[3] The northern city and the casting of Marie-France Pisier recall Alain Robbe-Grillet's Trans- Europe Express (1966).
[3] Samson 's death a gunshot puncturing his eye and witnessed through the window of a train, recalls a scene in The Birds (1963).
[3] The curl in the hair of Antoinette (Hélène Surgère) recalls that of Madeleine/ Carlotta (Kim Novak) in Hitchcock's film.
The special features includes a commentary by film critics Andy Klein (The New Times) and Wade Major (Boxoffice Magazine).