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A long-established and distinguished group of musicians—members of the Fugue Quartet—who are bound together by strong emotional ties, is suddenly confronted with an announcement that seems to threaten its very survival. Fugue has two meanings: in music it is the repetition and development of a simple theme; and in psychiatry it is the loss of identity and flight from one's usual environment. The film plays with both meanings and shows the group unravelling while they painstakingly rehearse Beethoven's String Quartet No 14, Opus 131.
In the opening scene the mood is set by Peter, the cellist and the oldest member of the group, who is talking to his students about Opus 131 and the demands it makes on its players and the state of mind of its composer who, by 1826, was stone deaf and close to death. We learn that Peter is facing his own mortality and he is about to announce to the quartet that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and his playing days are numbered. The impact of this news on the quartet is profound and threatens to tear them apart.
The marriage of the second violin and viola players, Robert and Juliette, is the most shaken by the news. The partners react in different ways. Robert asserts himself and demands more changes in the quartet's style of performance; he wants to take more risks and suggests alternating roles with Daniel, the first violin, and that they should play from memory. Daniel rejects these suggestions. Juliette chooses to support Daniel. Peter's leaving is particularly painful for her. She had been brought up by Peter and his wife after her mother had died in childbirth. She now feels incapable of love and unable to welcome more change at a time when Robert is needing more affection and reassurance. Robert is deeply wounded by what he sees as his wife's disloyalty, gets drunk and spends the night with a beautiful flamenco dancer, which he regrets immediately.
Daniel's response to the impending loss of Peter is to become even more r