The Vietnam War from the North's viewpoint. Air raids on Hanoi stiffen the resolve of the population to strike back against a far more powerful enemy.

After a streak of betrayals in love, a scholar harbours a disdain for women and vows to stay away from their “venomous nature”. However, he soon grows increasingly obsessed with a prostitute he encountered one night, and falls deeply in love with her against the prejudices of his social class.

In early 20th-century North Vietnam, an impoverished woman is chastised by her parents for giving birth out of wedlock and has to sell her baby to evade punishments from the villagers. No longer able to bear the agony, she flees her hometown to find the lover who has abandoned her. A series of misfortunes and violations afterwards soon push the woman into a circle of violence and treachery.

Returning home from their touring opera troupe, actress Lanh has a rendezvous with her now-married former boyfriend, Phong, while leading-lady Xoan is about to be replaced by an understudy because of her pregnancy.