Summary
Amidst the absinthe-soaked haze of 1910s Greenwich Village, aspiring painter Stewart and singer-lover Hedda inhabit adjacent garrets where dreams permeate thin walls. Their bohemian idyll shatters when wealthy patroness Mrs. Trask materializes at their café table, offering Stewart full Parisian patronage with velvet-gloved coercion. Though initially resistant to abandoning Hedda, Stewart succumbs to artistic temptation after his lover's mysteriously insistent encouragement. Crossing the Atlantic unveils grotesque revelations: Mrs. Trask's sponsorship masks a predatory scheme to possess Stewart as her living masterpiece, while Hedda's sacrifice conceals her own Faustian bargain with the benefactress—trading her voice for his future. The ensuing maelstrom of betrayal crescendos when Stewart discovers Hedda's muteness during a catastrophic reunion, their love now a dissonant chord echoing through gilded cages and damp Parisian attics.
Synopsis
Stewart, an art student in New York City's "bohemian" Greenwich Village, lives next door to his girlfriend Hedda, who wants to be a singer. One night while they are dining at their favorite cafe', wealthy Mrs. Trask comes up to them with a proposition: she knows he is an artist and wants to go to Paris to study and develop his talent, and she will pay all his expenses. He refuses because he doesn't want to leave Hedda, but she eventually persuades him to agree. It turns out that she has an ulterior motive--as does Mrs. Trask.
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