A couple is kissing in a hotel room, astrophysics professor Ed (Jeremy Irons) and his lover the PhD student Amy Ryan (Olga Kurylenko). They can meet only occasionally, when Ed's work brings them together. He challenges her to reveal more of herself, perhaps something that bothers her but that she kept secret from him, but she refuses. Ed leaves the room for the airport hoping to see her at his next conference at her University. Next to her studies Amy has free-lance jobs as stuntwoman who is not afraid to perform dangerous scenes that normally lead to the death of the character: the movie shows her in action on occasion. She is even asked to model for a sculpture when this seems to demand near-suffocation.