A small group of French high school students goes on a school trip to Pompeii to discover its ruins and the bodies petrified by Vesuvius in 79 CE. It is in this ghost town that they are suddenly overcome by a dizzying sensation. One after another, James, Toni, Suzanne, and their Latin teacher, Mme Mercier, allow themselves to be engulfed by desire, anger, and despair—until they surrender to it completely and lose everything.