Young Wilhelm Meister is on the way: from Bonn, past a castle on the Rhine, through a suburb of Frankfurt and on to the great mountain, the Zugspitze. He is escaping from boredom and dullness, and he hopes that travel will enable him to fulfil his ambition to write.

On the journey, he meets a strange couple: Laertes, a street singer who is haunted by his Nazi past, a dumb girl, Mignon. He becomes friendly with a wandering poet, Bernhardt Landau, and falls in love with an actress, Therese. But the relationships set up, quickly break down. An elderly industrialist who offers the group shelter in his castle for the night, unexpectedly commits suicide. The poet then departs, and Wilhelm gets rid of the street singer, after suffering his prolonged stories about his past. Finally Therese goes off for Italy with Mignon. Wilhelm now wants to be alone and to have the opportunity to write. His journey ends on the Zugspitze.

The script is written by Peter Handke, who collaborated on the script of one of the most unusual films at the 1974 Melbourne festival, The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty Kick. Wrong Movement derives originally from Goethe's novel, Wilhelm Meister.