At a dusty crossroads in the Soviet Union villagers surrender their possessions - a horse, a samovar, a goat - to the state. The train which takes them away brings to the village a physically and mentally handicapped woman, barely able to speak. She makes herself bracelets of burrs and studies herself in a cracked and cloudy mirror. Befriended by very few, teased and tormented by many she seeks protection at a huge portrait of Stalin.

In 1940 Budapest, a successful doctor leads a perfect life, unaware that his wife and his adopted son are planning to run away together.

The aging Eszter clarify outstanding relationship.

The film has a broken meaning, the last time he was a proofreader for a book publisher, he is now unemployed. Ever since he was a child, he has always been the one who pulls the short one, and he takes the wrong one. At the beginning of the film, he finds himself in such a "bunbak" situation again, and then he decides to become a professional bunbak...

Based on Sándor Márai's novel, the films tells the story of two young cadets, closest friends once - two old men full of suspicion, bitterness and with a guilty conscience now, forty years later. They have not met since they were young - one of them was serving in the army in the tropics, the other was just sitting in the library watching the shutters in his castle after the army days. But now they meet again, it is time to showdown.