A wistful comedy of Balkan manners, the film concerns a pair of traveling icon restorers (and astronomers) who never quite get around to their work. Instead, they root around for small joys and philosophize incessantly about the decay of ancient treasures (like themselves). The younger of the two men's ministrations to the old master are full of tender regard and quiet resentment as the pair flit from one mild and pleasantly predictable adventure to the next en route to a vague contract in an Arcadian mountain village to restore the damaged frescoes of a l5th century Byzantine church. Their arrival brings new life to the forgotten church. When an attractive young painter insists on joining them in their hilltop encampment the younger of the two quasi scam artists is torn between lusty and paternal inclinations... The film walks a spirited tightrope between the tangible and the visionary, the comic and the tragic, the cheap mass-produced object and the hand-crafted work of art. Nothing in the film is what it seems but nothing seems what it is.