Quinsigamond has one attraction that puts it on the map: Herzog's Erotic Palace, the most luxurious pornographic theater in America. To Hugo Schick, triple-X auteur extraordinaire, the Palace is the one haven capable of housing his pathological ego. To Hermann Kinsky, crime king and mayor to the town's Bohemian ghetto, the theater is a plum prospect for takeover. More than another front for laundering semi-sour cash, the Erotic Palace may be the last place where the crime lord can find common ground with his son Jakob, heir to the mobster throne.
Yet the young prince couldn't care less about the gangster trade. Intent on becoming the noir-est director in the history of cinema, he sets out every night, camera on his shoulder, haunting Bangkok Park for the "elemental image."
On one of these forays he meets Sylvia Krafft, a photographer on her own odyssey. She discovers lodged inside an antique Aquinas camera, an unexpected key to her own shrouded past - as well as an augury for a future that rushes to meet them both.