Arles, France. The autumn of '88. Loneliness as thick as lead white paint. Setting up his easel before orchards, wheatfields and the few subjects who will tolerate him. His only friends a drunken postal worker, a skirt-chasing Zouave, and Rachel, one of Madame Virginie's girls. Then Gauguin shows up and the world blooms. They venture to the night cafe for an absinthe and on to Madame Virginie's to see Rachel. They gamble at Ginoux's table, throw punches in Place Lamartine, dance at the Folies. Gauguin nails him up in a coffin so he can taste death and when he awakes it is to a new life. And, always, they paint. Like madmen, relentlessly, passionately, radically. Sunflowers and vineyards and Les Alyscamps and the wash station on the Roubine du Roi. It's the most happiness Vincent has known since he was a boy. He doesn't realize that all hell's about to break loose - that Gauguin has a dark side, that Rachel is in trouble... or that much of what he sees is not really even there."