Aloys

Aloys Adorn is a cold, distant private investigator who films his subjects from a distance. He works with his recently deceased father and avoids personal contact with others. His apartment life is filled with ignored neighbors, especially the woman next door.

On the bus ride home from the funeral, Aloys drinks himself into unconsciousness. He wakes up the next morning on the bus to find his camera and all the tapes missing. The disappearance triggers his first real challenge to his distance and control.

A female voice contacts Aloys, claiming she stole his tapes and watched them. She announces that she plans to send the recordings to the people he filmed. Aloys threatens to call the police, but the threat is hollow, and the caller mocks his attempts to trace her.

During one call, the caller proposes a 'telephone hike' where they visualize a shared location and imagine conversing there. After hesitating, Aloys agrees to participate in this peculiar exercise. The concept blends his investigative instincts with a surreal, intimate method of connection.

Aloys reluctantly completes a walk through an imagined woods with the caller. The caller then abruptly ends the conversation, leaving Aloys unsettled and more curious about the mystery. The exercise erodes some of his emotional distance.

Returning home one night, Aloys sees his unconscious neighbor Vera being loaded into an ambulance. Using the clues from his pursuit, he realizes that Vera—the same woman he ignored—is the mysterious caller. This revelation collapses his sense of separation between himself and others.

Aloys learns Vera is a zookeeper who kept exotic animals. He uncovers that she lost her job after kidnapping a sheep and that she had attempted suicide. The new information reframes Vera and deepens the mystery of her relationship to Aloys.

Not knowing whether Vera survived, Aloys volunteers to water her flowers and feed her iguana. This gesture marks a softening in his routine of withdrawal and suggests his capacity for care. It also ties him to Vera through a shared responsibility.

Days later, Vera texts Aloys thanking him for looking after her stuff. Elated by the chance to connect, Aloys tries to initiate more telephone hikes. Vera hesitantly agrees and the two begin a renewed pattern of imagined exchanges.

The pair expand their telephone hikes to include virtual tours of Aloys's apartment party and an imagined dinner at his favorite restaurant. They also reenact a visit to the zoo Vera once worked at, with Vera guiding through the phone. These imagined outings replace real contact with shared fantasy.

On leave from the hospital, the real Vera attempts to visit Aloys at his apartment. He refuses to let her in, ensnared by his invented version of her and terrified of human contact. Vera leaves disappointed and returns to the hospital.

The shock of seeing the real Vera leave finally compels Aloys to confront his fears. He follows her to the hospital and, in a single night, sneaks into her room and sleeps on the ground next to her bed. This marks a decisive step toward human connection, however tentative.