Melancolía

Düsseldorf, 1853. The young artist Lars Hertervig, a student of Hans Gude at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, is locked in his room, paralyzed by the anxiety caused by art classes and the irrational love he feels for Helene Winckelmann, the daughter of his landlady. Lars's fixation on Helene, marked by hallucinations and furious sexual delusions, forces the young woman's family to expel him from the room where he is staying. With nowhere to go, Hertervig wanders between a cafe where he endures the ridicule of his classmates and the Winckelmanns' apartment, where he desperately tries to be admitted again: a kind of limbo that leads him to an inexorable state of craziness.