A publisher seeks information on a writer who died long ago.

A sickly young girl is given away by her father to a childless couple. Twenty years later, she marries her adopted father.

After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby’s safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shantytown in which they live.

An island retreat. A man, his face bandaged, plays cards nonchalantly. His ex-wife arrives. Conversations happen.