Plot summary

Professor Raimund Gregorius (Jeremy Irons), a teacher of Classics at a Bern, Switzerland institution, leads a lonely and staid existence. One rainy day while walking to work, he prevents a young woman from committing suicide. After losing track of her, he becomes obsessed with finding her to make sure she's all right, he going solely on what he knows, namely the bridge where she tried to jump, her red coat which she left behind, and a Portuguese language booked titled "Um Ourives das Palavras" (A Goldsmith of Words) by Amadeu de Almeida Prado (Jack Huston) and a train ticket to Lisbon in the coat pocket. Dropping everything in his life, Raimund decides to use the train ticket to see if he can find her there. En route to Lisbon, Raimund reads the book and becomes equally obsessed with finding all he can about the author due to the touching philosophies of life contained in the book, such philosophies which Raimund always contemplates, and how the book and/or the author is connected to the young woman. Upon arriving in Lisbon, Raimund initially learns that Amadeu de Almeida Prado was a medical doctor who originally wanted to be a philosopher and writer, that this book is his only published work, of which only one hundred copies were ever printed, and that he died a young man of thirty-three in 1974. If Raimund does learn the entire story, he will discover one of commitment to knowledge, repression, love, and betrayal, those items which still affect the living, such as that young woman, and may ultimately affect what happens in Raimund's own life.—Huggo