After her husband leaves her for a younger woman, the helping of her caring, but cynical godmother, is not enough to prevent Julia from plotting her revenge.

A woman seeks help from one of her bigamous husband's killers to transport his corpse back to her home.

The legendary life of Mexican singer Lucha Reyes is the basis of this fictionalized biography ( or as director Arturo Ripstein puts it "an imaginary biography"). Lucha Reyes was an unconventional, and sexually liberated woman, most famous for her "cancion ranchera" style singing. Her story begins in 1939, where at 33 she still lived at home with her mother, Dona Victora, the madame of a renowned Mexico City whorehouse. Lucha marries the liberal Pedro Calderon and then buys a beggar's daughter. She becomes the mother to this child, Luzma. Lucha craves lasting love like junkies crave heroin. But for her loyal daughter, she never finds it and in the end no one can help her.

Driven by desire and desperate for self-love, Coral and Nicolás will abandon their past lives in a journey surrounded by murder.

The film tells the story of the Boteros, a middle-class Mexican family struggling against poverty after their father's death. Ignacia (Egurrola) is the Boteros mother, a desperate woman who chooses to sacrifice the destiny of her three older children, in order to protect Gabriel (Laguardia) the youngest one. She believes Gabriel will climb the social structure and bring back the lost fortune to the family. But destiny has other plans for the Boteros and tragedy will overcome eventually. Based on the novel of Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz.