1979: Cousins Carole and Jérôme go on an organized trip to Odessa, behind the Iron Curtain. During the day, posing as tourists celebrating their engagement, they visit monuments and museums. In the evening they slip away from the group and meet “refuseniks”, Jews persecuted by the Soviet regime for wanting to leave the country. While Carole is motivated by political commitment and a taste for risk, Jérôme’s motivation is Carole. "Behind its palpable romantic aspects, 'Les Interdits' finds its origins in the personal story of Anne Weil, who, in her youth, herself experienced this risky, clandestine, and, in a way, militant journey—although she rejects the term. Fiction naturally imposes itself on the film in its omniscient nature, which presents with equal interest the personal, and almost opposing, motivations of its two main protagonists. Carole's optimism is confronted with Jérôme's coldness, whose presence is justified only by his desire to share this incredible experience with his cousin, for whom he has feelings. This narrative balance, which contrasts two different visions of an event that nevertheless connects them, gives the film an emotional depth that is propelled by the sexual act that the two cousins engage in, in a very natural way. This ultimate taboo raises very complex questions about communitarianism and self-affirmation through faith, questions that the film does not answer because that is not its ambition. And fortunately so." (Pierre Perrado, on: avoir-alire.com)