Herbert Krcal (Roland Düringer) and his wife Margit (Nina Proll) dream of owning a home. They prefer to do this in the "Blue Lagoon", a prefabricated house park in the south of Vienna, where they regularly go on pilgrimage with their son Philipp. Just as regularly, they have to recognize the bitter truth that they cannot actually afford the dream house they have visited.
Herbert lives a rather simple life, left to his own devices. He works as a projectionist in a shabby Viennese movie theater and lives alone with his red nameless cat in the free caretaker's apartment of a somewhat run-down apartment building. Now and then he visits his mother in a nursing home, meets with an old friend of his father, or comes to meetings of a savings club. Saving money is pretty much the center of his life because he has a dream. He wants to emigrate to the U.S. to buy his own movie theater and to reunite with his long-lost father. But when Rita, a young student, moves into the apartment building things in his life are changed completely.
Peter Handke adaptó su propia novela para este film sobre un portero de fútbol que pierde súbitamente la concentración en medio de un partido y es expulsado del juego. Confundido, vaga por la ciudad sin saber dónde ir y termina realizando acciones sin mucha explicación ni sentido.
