After the centenarian Trudy’s death, her inheritors refuse the scheming mayor’s bid to buy her lakeside estate for a car lot and instead set about renovating the allegedly haunted villa. Their plans, already complicated by the village busybodies led by the all-knowing Horáčková, go wrong when a youthful, sporty new priest arrives and challenges the community’s expectations.

When a feisty village gossip ropes a visiting junior hockey team into her schemes, hoping one will notice her granddaughter, the resulting clash with the exasperated mayor and a hapless regional inspector sets off a chain of uproarious misunderstandings. All the while, an unconventional young priest with a mischievous name looks on in bemused bewilderment.

Lovers & Murderers is about the ongoing war between those who have and those who want to have what the others have. The have-nots see themselves as poor victims trying to get for themselves what is justly theirs. But when the have-nots become haves, they continue to see themselves as victims of the hordes baying for what is justly theirs, and they have neither the energy nor the security to enjoy what they have obtained. The movie takes place in the microcosm of a small apartment building. The principal goal of the young people who share rooms in the building is to move into their own room and, some day, a real apartment. They scheme to get what they're after: form short-lived alliances, petition, frighten, marry, become pregnant, anything that might work. Lovers & Murderers presents Páral's vision of mankind caught in a cyclical process in which ideology pales before the pettiness, cruelty, and self-justification of human nature.