"Anything said against the military and the priesthood is well said," Franju once asserted, so perhaps it was just a matter of time before he was drawn to a tale of repression among the clergy such as Zola's La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret, the story of a young abbot's inevitable fall from grace. But it was also natural, for Franju, to turn Zola's psychological study of frustration into a dreamer's search for freedom in love. Mouret (Francis Huster) is a fragile, sensitive young priest living in a barren land among faithless peasants and fellow clergy who spread the gospel through the whip. A nervous breakdown and a (happy) bout of amnesia lead the abbot to translate his adoration for the Holy Virgin into sexual passion for a young woman, Albine, who entertains him in "Le Paradou," the fecund garden where she lives. Dream and reality are never quite discernible in Franju's world of wonders, and he paints Zola, the naturalist, in his own image, that of the sad seeker of liberation from reality in profoundly real fantasy.