A young Parisian postman, Jules, is obsessed with opera and particularly with Cynthia Hawkins, a beautiful and celebrated American soprano who has never allowed her singing to be recorded. Jules attends a
recital where Hawkins sings the
aria "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana" from the opera
La Wally. He covertly makes a high-quality
bootleg recording of her performance using a
Nagra professional
tape-recorder. Afterwards, he steals the gown she was wearing from her dressing room. Later, Jules accidentally comes into possession of an
audio cassette with the recorded testimony of a
prostitute, Nadia, which exposes a senior police officer,
Commissaire divisionnaire Jean Saporta, as the boss of a drug trafficking and prostitution racket. Nadia drops the cassette in the bag of the postman's
moped moments before she is murdered by Saporta's two henchmen, "L' Antillais" and "Le Curé" ("The West Indian" and "The Priest"). Police officers Paula and Zatopek are now after Jules. They seek Nadia's cassette as they know it incriminates a prominent gangster. But they are unaware the gangster is actually their boss. Jules is also being hunted by Saporta's two henchmen, as well as by two Taiwanese men who want his unique and valuable recording of Cynthia Hawkins. Jules seeks refuge from all these pursuers with two new friends, a mysterious
bohemian named Serge Gorodish and his companion, Alba, a young
Vietnamese-French thief. Jules decides to return Cynthia Hawkins' dress at her luxury hotel. She is initially angry, but eventually forgives him. She is intrigued by Jules' adoration and a kind of romantic relationship develops, expressed by the background of a piano instrumental, as they walk around Paris in the
Jardin des Tuileries early one morning. The Taiwanese try to
blackmail Cynthia into signing a
recording contract with them. Although they do not possess Jules' recording of her performance, they claim they do and threaten to release it as a
pirated record if she does not cooperate; she indignantly refuses. Jules is spotted and chased by the two police officers but he escapes by riding his moped through the
Paris Métro system. He takes refuge in the apartment of a prostitute friend (an unnamed character) but flees when he realizes she is part of Saporta's criminal network and will likely betray him; he leaves just before L' Antillais and Le Curé arrive. The enforcers catch up with him and Jules is shot but Gorodish rescues Jules just before Le Curé can kill him. Gorodish and Alba drive the wounded Jules to a
safe house outside Paris, a remote lighthouse, in Gorodish's antique
Citroën Traction Avant. Gorodish now has the cassette recording that incriminates Saporta and he uses it to blackmail the Commissaire. The two meet in a large, abandoned factory; Saporta pays off Gorodish, but intends to kill him – before the meeting, he had placed a
remote control bomb in the back of Gorodish's car. The two Taiwanese interrupt them and steal the cassette at gunpoint, believing it to be Jules' recording of Cynthia Hawkins. They attempt to drive away in Gorodish's car but are killed when Saporta detonates his bomb with the intention of killing Gorodish. Gorodish then drives away in an identical Citroën that he had hidden in advance, showing he had likely anticipated these events. Meanwhile, Jules returns to Paris to give Cynthia his bootleg recording but L'Antillais and Le Curé are lying in wait for him outside her hotel. They abduct Jules and take him back to his loft apartment with the intention of killing him there and faking his suicide. However, police officer Paula has been keeping Jules' apartment under surveillance; she saves him by killing Le Curé and wounding L'Antillais. Saporta then appears. He kills his surviving henchman and attempts to kill Jules and Paula, intending to make it look like his henchmen shot them. Gorodish once again saves the day by turning out the lights and tricking Saporta into stepping into an empty elevator shaft and falling to his death. At the end of the film, Jules meets Cynthia at an empty theatre where he plays the
La Wally recording for her. She expresses her nervousness about it because she had "never heard [herself] sing." ==Cast==