Euolaz—one of those comfortable, sprawling Swiss villages where the cattle trot home in the evening and the streets echo the sound of their bells. TV journalist Bernard Fontana arrives with his assistant Didier to record an interview with an expert on famine and malnutrition, who has retired to the Alps.

The interview does not come off, but Fontana learns of another story—a fatal road accident which caused the death of a young "guest worker , Mario Ricci During their stay in the village, the two journalists get involved in the mystery that surrounds the accident, and various sub plots reveal the tensions beneath the peaceful looking village imagery .

With his watchful, detailed annotation of discomforts in this green, quiet setting, Goretta has made a gripping, intense film—an Alpine suspense story, or, as Penelope Houston puts it ‘milk chocolate with quite a firm centre'