An American and his French-speaking Russian girlfriend wander through the Southwest (including a strikingly photographed Joshua Tree National Park), fornicating more than talking. Dumont has called this an "experimental horror film," and he sets a tense mood through long, atmospheric sequences in which the couple drive through the desert, leading up to an eventual explosion of underlying violence.  With this minimalist exercise, Dumont extends the European-director-in-America tradition of such films as Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point and Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas.