Gösta Eriksson, a hairdresser, buys a car from used-car dealer Bertil Planåker. But Gösta soon discovers that the car is a wreck. Planåker won't give him his money back, in fact he denies ever having seen Gösta. Gösta's brother Rolle is released from prison and promises to help him. They form an investment company, Parabola, and convinces Planåker to invest a lot of money in it. Planåker has a lot of shady business colleagues who also invest their money. Gösta's and Rolle's scam becomes much bigger than they had bargained for.

Teresa is overwhelmed: with a husband, three young sons, a job as a crew leader in a textile factory, and volunteer commitments as cultural leader of her union. Her husband, Ramón, believes her additional pursuits take time away from her domestic tasks and wants more of her attention, accusing her of neglecting him, her house and her family. A hard-hitting Cuban drama that presents a woman struggling for control of her own life and deals with the social consequences of traditional male chauvinism.

A bourgeois Cuban family of aristocratic origin locks itself into its mansion when the Cuban Revolution comes to power, waiting for the new regime to be overthrown. As time passes, they regress to older and older systems of political order, from capitalism to feudalism to "primitive savagery."