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In a modern world careering through pop decadence, Charles Bremer (Norman Kaye) is a gentle anachronism. A man of means and decorous tastes, he loves things of beauty—flowers, sculpture, sacred music, the nude female form—with the intensity of a St. Francis of the Arts. Alas, this is Australia, not Assisi, and outside the rococo solitude of his Melbourne house, things are just too hectic. So Charles brings home his objects of pleasure: he engages an artist's model to undress in his living room to the strains of Lucia di Lammermoor. Paul Cox's film is every bit as odd and endearing as Charles—an Ealing comedy gone berserk, with its hero an emotional outcast who triumphs over, rather than accommodates himself to, the 20th century. Advice to the jaded: cultivate this frail and lovely hothouse plant.