“He’s changed since his daughter vanished. He says such strange things,” says a woman attending the lecture of Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur). And she’s right. The physician simply hasn’t been the same, speaking of radical new medical advancements that could have great promise—if only they weren’t so deadly. To his patients and admirers, he’s become increasingly distant. That’s because he’s become increasingly consumed by his missing daughter.
The police find a body in the river that has a unique identifier; like Genessier’s daughter, the woman’s eyes are the only part of her face still intact. Dismayed, he accepts it's his daughter and holds a funeral, hoping that he can obtain closure. Except it’s all a lie: Genessier’s daughter isn’t missing at all. He’s locked her away in his mansion while he tries to develop a procedure to graft someone else's face onto hers. And he’ll stop at nothing to restore his daughter, no matter how many times he has to try his radical and experimental surgery.
