The spark that inspired the plot was meeting a young man who told me he was planning to go to Holland for an assisted suicide (Editor's note: See The Law on Euthanasia in Holland and the Chabot case, 1991-95). The young man was convinced that this was his only way of ending an existence that he considered to lack any dignity. An extreme viewpoint, very hard to share, and certainly not an option for foreign nationals. The film starts with a dream sequence: a flight skimming over the surface of the sea, a flight that only a seagull could make. A human body sinks into the blue, and then slowly rises back to the surface. A man breaks through the waves, alone, in the wide open sea. The dream evokes a sense of loss; it is also a premonition. It's dawn. We find ourselves in an unspoiled and wide-open landscape, by a lonely road that runs along the coast, flanked by a railway line. A car is parked there. Inside, a man and a woman are asleep. It's the same man we saw in the dream. Far from the car, we see a young man heading away from them, into the vastness of the countryside. We become aware right away that what we're seeing is the beginning of the film's epilogue.