The story follows James Ballard (James Spader), a film producer whose sterile marriage to Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger) is revitalized after he survives a near-fatal head-on collision.

The film’s thesis is radical: in a world saturated by technology, our deepest desires are no longer biological, but technological. The characters cannot achieve orgasm through simple touch; they require the ritual of the crash—the impact, the wound, the scar. The most erotic moment in the film is not a kiss, but when James and Helen, both bearing the same leg brace from their shared accident, compare their injuries. The wound has replaced the genitals as the locus of identity and desire.