In stories inspired by the writings of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904–1991), the Belgian director takes a typically indirect route to her European Jewish heritage-via New York-capturing her characters' experience of displacement. Featuring a cast of wonderful New York actors both known and unknown, the film consists entirely of stories, anecdotes, and jokes, as if to literalize that quality in Singer's characters that implies that, after the Holocaust, all life is just play-acting. In a sense, their humor derives from being the (very) animated walking dead. There is the tragedy of the woman who was rescued from poverty by a wealthy couple who then demanded one child in payment; the anxiety of a woman in love with two men; the men in a cafe who play get-the-waiter. For them, New York is a way station, a point of transit before another incarnation, so Akerman's camera magically makes the real location appear to be an artificial set.