Pauli is an academic music wunderkind, a star at the highest point of his career. After a nervous breakdown and a suicide attempt, he returns to his hometown and his parents. Floundering between what he wants and questions he cannot answer, he runs into an old classmate, Iris. She draws Pauli into supranaturalist musical creation, rekindles his interest in life – and also in a girl with a hologram dog – and challenges him to start a band with like-minded folks. Pauli thinks to himself: this will be a scandal just like Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring! At last, Pauli feels alive – but a treacherous whisper tells him these newfound sensations are short-lived…

From frame to frame, these lines from The Smiths surface in the mind: “Oh, please don’t drop me home, because it’s not my home, it’s their home, and I’m welcome no more.” The debut feature by Finnish musician Parppei – also appearing as a Dadaist Finnish John Cage – brings him not only back home, but also to a muted tragedy born of the spirit of music. Moving between minor and major keys, this dramedy – screened in the ACID competition at Cannes – continues Dolan’s themes from It’s Only the End of the World (2016) and the subject of limits of control, what the society and close ones expect of a young man who was made for life but cannot meet it on his own path. For those who feel a touch of melomania on Mondays that turns into melancholy by Wednesday evening, and the thought of Sunday sends shivers down the spine.