This strikingly original "prison film" is devoid of the extreme violence and the finger-pointing melodrama associated with the genre; but its tale of a prisoner's isolation is all the more involving for its clean, well-lighted setting in a modern Swiss prison. The first fiction film by acclaimed documentarist Jacqueline Veuve, it is based on a true incident which the filmmaker investigated after reading about it in a Lausanne newspaper. Salvatore is a drug addict awaiting trial on a robbery charge. During nine months of solitude in his cell, he dreams of his girlfriend and their little son; envisions (in flashback) his relatives, his childhood and his escapades as a "free" man; and reads and re-reads a Jack London story about a lost prospector freezing to death in the Yukon. Salvatore, too, is freezing to death in the cold indifference of the ultra-modern prison. He has nothing to look forward to, and memories can't keep him warm. He chooses to escape--through suicide.