A corrupt lawyer hires a killer to murder his client's divorced ex-wife. The start of a true love story.

Fashion model Sylvie falls asleep drunk in the cab of Munich taxi driver Paul, and an impossible love affair beckons. Renegade director Klaus Lemke had previously startled German TV audiences with the biker drama Rocker, announcing an unprecedented, unvarnished freshness and authenticity with nonprofessional actors, real dialect and on-the-fly style. In Sylvie, he adds a disarming tenderness.

Reflected in an artificial and bombastically staged illusory world with Wagnerian compositions, glossy and satirical time references, 19th century German figures and traditions are stripped of their mythology and interpreted by the Germany of 1972.

A former bank clerk conceives a one-man robbery at the bank he works. He had before established an alibi for himself pretending and declaring him legally dead. Further complications ensue when he rejoins his estranged wife.