Summary
A matrimonial cadaver in pin-stripe armour, Jacques Leroi, drags the rusted cage of his expectations across a cloud-sea stitched with hydrogen and regret. His silver dirigible—equal parts honeymoon suite and coffin—splinters above a horizon of molten jade, spitting him like Jonah into a crescent of sand that history forgot to civilise. Here, grief is composted into frangipani nectar; no one keeps time, no one keeps anything. He learns to walk barefoot through ceremony, surrendering wristwatch, wallet, wedding ring to the tide. A girl whose laughter contains monsoon music teaches him that desire can be a communal drum rather than a private wound. Yet the ghost-wife waiting in a Manhattan brownstone keeps sending telegrams of guilt across the water, and the metropolis—its neon arteries twitching like a hooked fish—summons him back. He boards a freighter constructed from driftwood and conflicting loyalties, only to discover that imported paradise calcifies under electric light: skyscrapers sneer, stock-tickers devour hours, the marriage bed remains an autopsy table. One final choice glimmers—return to the island where happiness is a shared skin, or stay and cauterise his loneliness with duty. The camera lingers on a man split down the middle, a human diptych: left panel coral dusk, right panel asphalt dawn.
Synopsis
Disillusioned in marriage, Jacques Leroi attempts an airship flight across the Pacific Ocean, but crashes and washes ashore on an island populated by a peaceful tribe of completely happy people. The islanders have divested themselves of selfish motives and social conventions and live in perfect harmony. There Jacques falls in love, but although he senses the island is his only hope of true happiness, his conscience demands that he try to repair his wrecked life back in civilization. Returning to New York, he finds a difficult decision awaiting him.
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