JM, Rikiya Kurokawa, is a rich, young IT worker and occasional hacker in Tokyo who becomes obsessed with acquiring a pristine 1967 Citroën DS, known to French car enthusiasts as the Goddess. He lives in a spotless but chilly hi-tech apartment, where the city’s blue-grey smog seems to press in on him as he gathers snorkeling gear and a collection of exotic reptiles, hardly ever speaking to his live-in girlfriend. He believes that this legendary car might fill the hollow spaces in his life.
After a hopeful online search leads him to a perfectly restored example owned by a couple in Australia, JM abandons his job and travels abroad to close the deal, chasing the promise of meaning that the Goddess promises to bring. At the Australian address, he encounters BG, a blind and emotionally unstable young woman, Rose Byrne, who is looking after a young child and explains that the couple never actually owned the Citroën. She recounts a grim history: the husband killed his wife and then took his own life after a money dispute, leaving the car in a precarious limbo. BG tests the car with JM and tells him that its true owner is somewhere in the Outback, a five-day drive away. Driven by the vehicle’s allure, JM agrees, and BG abruptly abandons the child at a service station, instructing the police to locate the girl.
As the two set off into an austere and breathtaking Outback, the film unveils a cascade of flashbacks that reveal the dark traumas shaping their lives. JM’s wealth is traced back to a single, fateful breach: a friend gives him the bank password, a scheme that leads to fortune after the friend is killed in a road accident. This backstory helps explain his attempt to fill an emotional void by possessing something as perfect and powerful as the Goddess, a symbol of control in a world that feels alien to him, almost like Mars in its isolation.
BG’s past is equally harrowing. She reveals a history of sexual assault by a traveling circus boxer and a life shadowed by abuse from her grandfather, and by her mother, Marie, Elise McCredie, who is deeply religious and unstable. Grandpa, Nicholas Hope, a former hippie, wine maker, and opal miner, embodies a philosophy that rejects conventional morality in favor of a rugged, unbound existence. BG’s devotion to a radio obituary notices program, and her fascination with the sound of insects splattering on the windshield—the “sound of death”—color her worldview. Despite being blind, BG carries a pistol and uses it to frightening effect: she fires at two men who pull up near them during the test drive and later uses the gun to silence the radio that delivers those obituary notices.
Unbeknownst to JM, the car is ultimately tied to BG’s grandfather, and she leads him toward the old man not to seal a sale but to confront the past and possibly kill him. Their journey through a world that can be cruel and hostile gradually turns into something more intimate; the bond between them deepens, and JM even teaches BG how to dance, finding a fragile connection amid the chaos. The trip becomes less about ownership and more about healing and understanding.
When BG finally locates her grandfather at a rundown opal mine, she faces a pivotal choice. She had planned to shoot him, but the experience of the road—and the genuine care she begins to feel from JM—convinces her to let go of revenge. The film closes with BG and JM continuing their journey together in the Goddess, having both confronted and come to terms with their pasts, finding a path forward that is not defined by possession but by connection and acceptance.
