Working with major international stars (Rutger Hauer, Anthony Quayle, Sandrine Dumas) and far away from his usual Italian base, Olmi paradoxically created possibly his quietest, most tender film to date, a portrait of an alcoholic that's a mixture of fever dream, religious reverie, and magic realism. Staggering through Paris, a homeless drunkard (Hauer, in one of his best performances) encounters a mysterious stranger who gives him 200 francs, with the only catch that he must return the money at some point to a church dedicated to St. Theresa. Suddenly flush with funds, the drunkard dedicates himself to the job of re-entering respectable life (complete with a newspaper, new wallet, and new suit), but the miseries of his past, whether in the form of ghostly visions or all-too-real acquaintances, call him away from salvation and back towards the gutter. Olmi refuses both religious metaphors and socio-political grandstanding, instead finding resonance and lyricism in Hauer's frayed shirt collar and trembling, dirtied hands.