Away from every-day-life in Berlin which fades out in the afternoon entering darkness Edmond (a man in his late sixties) visits by advise of his older friend Kogi (75) a mysterious ‘maison’, kind of a bordello, specialized for senile customers beyond their 80’s.

In this ‘etablissement’ it is possible for these old men to spend time in bed with beautiful, sleeping girls a whole night through. The girls won’t awake, they are narcotised, and these old guys will feel warm and comfortable embracing the youth and the beauty of these young women.

Madame (60), the ‘managing director’ of the ‘etablissement’ takes care almost motherlike of these old men as well as for their young ladies.

More and more Edmond surrenders to this unconscious seduction, juvenile virginity and unpredictable sensuality. In confrontation to his age, bedazzled by breath, scent and unguilty warmth of the young women he glides into associations and memories of his past life. Bizarre moments become inspiration and the urge to disappear next to a girl into death.

By hazard Edmond observes how Madame supervising a corpse packed in a bag, thrown into a car and secretly taken away.

Nevertheless Edmond returns more and more often to the ‘House of the Sleeping Beauties’ considering questions of morality and limits. But Madame resents Edmonds interrogation and occasional flirts in a very relaxed way, she never answers questions.

Where reality doesn’t seem to exist it doesn’t take long until it sends with fatal complications the dreams of the old man to an end. But he is redeemed.

What is this film about?

It is about transitoriness, remembrance, mourning, guilt, loneliness, sex and death, eroticism and dying. These are the main threads of this film.

‘Being an old man always means being the neighbour of death.’

When I read Kawabata’s book for the first time I thought: What a beautifully strange and melancholic story!

Research showed that such an establishment actually existed in Berlin in the 1920’s and 30’s; surely there were also some in Prague, Paris or Vienna too. I was then convinced that this novel tells a story that could not only have happened in Japan, but could be told in Europe as well.

I only inherited the sleeping girls, Madame and Eguchi (whom I call Edmond) from Kawabata’s plot. Then I continued the story far beyond the novel, added a couple of characters and expanded the ‘thriller element’ that mysteriously accompanies the entire novel. The memories don’t belong to Eguchi anymore, but to Edmond, whom I gave an equivalent European memory, based on my own experiences.

The closeness of erotic adventure and the yearning for death, the painful memories of Edmond’s dead wife and daughter, the warmth of the young sleeping women, the strangeness of Madame and the organisation of the ‘Redeemer Sect’ behind her, add up to an insomnia that makes Edmond a stroller, a wanderer through the night. Edmond, pushed by his feelings of guilt, his craving for an embrace and tenderness at the end of his life, has just one thing left - he will die of a broken heart, but redeemed.