Set in the volatile Paris summer of 1938, ” The Age of Reason” follows two days in the life of Mathieu Delarue, a philosophy teacher, & his circle in the cafes & bars of Montparnasse. Mathieu has so far managed to contain sex & personal freedom in conveniently separate compartments. But now he is in trouble, urgently trying to raise 4, 000 francs to procure a safe abortion for his mistress, Marcelle. Beyond all this, filtering an uneasy light on his predicament, rises the distant threat of the coming of the Second World War.