Ms. Violante Miranda is a bordello owner who raises a small girl as her own granddaughter. When she gets a little older, she is sent to study in Europe, and when she returns, she becomes a socialite, rejecting her previous milieu and her "grandmother".

Rosario is a prostitute who lives in her married sister's house. When the latter wants to be a hooker too, she doesn't approve.

Divided into three episodes based on stories by Stanislaw Ponte Preta (Sérgio Porto), the film portrays three young people from Rio de Janeiro: a furious lover, a beautiful beachgoer, and a former beauty queen. All live in profound solitude amid the apparent social vibrancy of Copacabana.

Sílvia Nogalis, a renowned concert pianist, prefers her career to her marriage. On the night she performs Beethoven's "Appassionata", she learns of the death of her husband, maestro Walter Hauser.