The setting is Paris, where the carefree young Bernard has just gotten engaged to the vivacious Christine. But one afternoon on the metro Bernard meets Heloise, a hypnotically beautiful woman dressed in archaic period garb, and he's immediately besotted. Naturally Bernard's relationship with Christine suffers. He comes to view her, and the life he’s been living, as an oppressive nuisance. Bernard decides he can't maintain the posh apartment he and Christine have rented, as among other things the lighting is too bright. He's led by Bottereau, an asthmatic creep who's always seen in the company of Heloise, to a secluded and hopelessly old-fashioned apartment that Christine can't stand but which Bernard, of course, loves. What he doesn't know is that the place is actually Heloise's former residence--and that she and Bottereau are in fact centuries-old vampires.