Lorenz Meran, a successful gay author suffering acute writers' block, has to leave Berlin and return to eastern Switzerland to provide care for his aged mother, Rosie. But it is not only his mother's battle against being dictated to and losing her dignity that he is struggling with. It's also his own midlife crisis.

A young teacher in Zurich in the 1950s falls in love with a transvestite star but is torn between his bourgeois existence and his commitment to homosexuality. He joins a gay organization that is eventually seen as the pioneer of gay emancipation in Europe.