In a bombed-out church, decorated with the detritus of life (old furniture, a bathtub, a tinny piano, bits of lace and lots of birds), two friends, Yorick and Ondrej, live apart from the world. They take in a young Jewish orphan, Martha, and the three re-create a family and a home. These young people become devoted to playing the fool as a measure of distance from the horrors they have already absorbed. This is a mad man's Jules and Jim, a post-apocalyptic Band of Outsiders; it might have been set in any age, but there is much to set it in our own. It could be seen as the ultimate East European housing-shortage (and/or furniture-moving) film, but this one, shot in the fall of 1968, gives a rationale for this crazy way of life: "When soldiers invade your country and steal your house and your language, if you build yourself a house in your soul, you will be happy." Like other Slovakian films we have seen, this story of youths driven sane by looking at a mad world is a plea for difference that sets out in a spirit of humorous rebellion and ends tragically. The film was banned until 1990.