One Vienna winter, Johann, a guard at the grand Kunsthistorisches Museum encounters Anne, a visitor called to Austria for a family medical emergency.

Their meeting sparks an unexpected series of explorations – of their own lives and the life of the city, and of the way artwork can reflect and shape daily experience.

The museum is seen not as an archaic institution of historical artifacts, but as an enigmatic crossroads in which, through the art, a discussion takes place across time with vital implications in the contemporary world.

The "conversations" embodied in the museum's collection revolve around the matters that most concern us: death, sex, history, theology, materialism, and so on.

Near the film's end, Johann and Anne are exploring on the fringe of the city when her ill cousin's condition reaches a crisis point.