[4] In 1912, Jules, a shy Austrian writer living in Paris, forges a friendship with the more extroverted Frenchman Jim.

At a slide show, they become entranced with a bust of a goddess with a serene smile and travel to an island in the Adriatic Sea to see it.

Both he and Jim serve during the war, on opposing sides; each fears throughout the conflict the potential for facing the other or learning that he might have killed his friend.

After the war, Jim visits, and later stays with, Jules, Catherine, and their young daughter Sabine at their chalet in the Black Forest.

Jules confides to Jim about the tensions in their marriage; Catherine torments and punishes him at times with numerous affairs, and she once left him and Sabine for six months.

The three live happily with Sabine in the chalet until tensions between Jim and Catherine arise over their inability to conceive a child.

Jim encounters Jules and Catherine in the Studio des Ursulines cinema during a screening of a newsreel depicting Nazi book burnings.

She asks Jules to watch them and then drives the car off a ruined bridge into the nearby river, killing both herself and Jim.