In 1913, in Oklahoma, oil derrick owner Lena Doyle, aided by her father and a hobo, is stubbornly drilling for oil despite the pressure from major oil companies to sell her land.
Abel Hradscheck, the owner of an inn in the Oderbruch country, faces financial ruin. For this state of affairs, Ursula, his wife and former actress, is by no means free of blame.
A couple is suffering from sexual estrangement. The husband is having an affair with his secretary and the wife takes up with Sandra an interior decorator.
In this film the director's recurring concerns return: the divisions in the Chilean left, and its contradictions between what the director calls the "traditional" and the "revolutionary" left.
The innkeeper Barnabáš and the teacher Isidor Slovíčko succumb to the lure of old Moreles, to whom the young Taussig sends enthusiastic letters from America.