Our hero appears to be a man with two first names. Thomas Thomas (voiced by Benoit Verhaert) is an acute agoraphobe, with a pathological fear of open spaces and human contact.
The 33-year-old Thomas hasn't set foot outside his hermetically sealed apartment in eight years---or allowed anyone else to enter. All groceries and other supplies have to be hand-delivered, deposited in an “air lock” between the outer and inner doors.
Luckily, Thomas lives in a futuristic world in which agoraphobic contemporary social trends like media saturation, cyber-cocooning and Internet shopping have been carried to unforeseen extremes. Plugged into his “visiophone” 24 hours a day, Thomas can interact with all the important people in his life, from a safe and sanitary distance.
Thomas is never visible to the audience; we hear his voice, but his point of view is also ours. We see his interlocutors exactly as he does, as brightly-colored images on the video/theater screen.
These colorful and eccentric figures include the fancifully tattooed insurance agent (Alexandre von Sivers) who manages his business affairs, the bossy psychologist (Frederic Topart) who may or may not be trying to cure his ailment, and a voluptuous computer-generated “virtual girlfriend,“ Clara, whose pixilated charms seem to be wearing a bit thin.
But now, Thomas’ cozy mediated shell is about to be cracked wide open. His insurance rep is pressuring him to take advantage of a government-run prostitution service designed especially for the disabled. And Thomas’ shrink, who thinks he needs to be violently shaken out of his complacency, has signed him up for a chirpy Internet dating service.
Suddenly, it seems, everyone seems to be trying to drag Thomas, kicking and screaming, out of his comfortable cave.
Through the on-line dating service, Thomas makes contact with Mélodie (Magali Pinglaut), an adventurous and high-spirited young woman who is intrigued, rather than repulsed, by his account of his affliction. But she may want a lot more in the way of real intimacy than he is willing to consider.
Meanwhile, Thomas finds himself irresistibly drawn to the sad and elegant Eva (Aylin Yay), one of the government prostitutes, who seems weighed down by a tragic past. What’s more, she is the first person Thomas has ever come across who may be as skittish and as stand-off-ish as he is; a true soul mate.
As the panicky agoraphobe begins considering the possibility of venturing OUTSIDE for the first time in more than a decade, he is also torn between these two attractive women.
Thomas Thomas is facing the most important choices of his life... © 2001 IFC Films
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