Vienna - at the crossroads of the political blocs in East and West. Here, Andrzej, a Polish Jew and communist who is the head of a spy ring, meets the student Lisa. She succumbs to an obsessive passion. He uses sex as a momentary escape. The third protagonist is the city of Vienna itself, with its unique atmosphere, its indifference, and general gloom, a Babylon of languages, a milieu of emigrants, old Spanish fighters, and agents for the East. The rhythm of it all, according to Jelinek, is a gently oscillating sine wave, cool and suddenly disrupted by sharp spikes of action. She wrote this screenplay in 1980; Rainer Boldt was set to direct, and Helmut Wietz to produce. Serge Gainsbourg and Tilda Swinton were considered for the lead roles. However, the project stumbled in the jungle of West German film funding.