Filip is torn by doubt. He wants to avoid becoming average, one of the many rats in the race for material wealth. He is seriously thinking about entering a monastery. Hanka attends night school and earns a marginal living as a dressing room attendant on film sets and during fashion shows. She earnestly fears that she may be a barrier to Filip’s self-fulfillment and wonders whether she shouldn’t encourage him to be bolder in life. Taking inspiration from Balzac, who would sometimes take a peripheral character from one book and make him the protagonist in another, Zanussi has retrieved these minor characters from his previous film Life as a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease and allowed them to blossom. What is happiness for two young people in our modern world? What does it mean to live at the height of your ambitions, follow your greatest dreams? Is this at all possible today? The answer in The Supplement is an unequivocal “yes.”