Romania had it rough under its last communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, and things are even rougher now. Before, their problems were oppression and poverty. Now, their problem is mostly poverty - and plenty of it. In this grim comedy (to call it a black comedy would be to paint too perky a picture of it), Vasile (Gheorghe Dinica)has a wife whom he's fond of, and a mistress, whom he's fonder of. He manages a nearly abandoned movie theater, and makes just about nothing doing it. When his wife announces she's pregnant, he nearly goes frantic trying to find money to get her an abortion. However, what truly sends him over the edge is when his mistress decides to become a prostitute because, after all, the money is good. These two situations send him straight to the loony bin, and when he gets out, he discovers that his wife has rented their apartment to pornographic filmmakers, and guess who's starring in them?

Director and screenwriter Mircea Daneliuc, with co-author Dinu Sararu, set this story of the peasants' resistence to land reform in the 1950s in Rumania against snatches of historical events that led up to this moment in time, and against the complicated individuals who were chosen by history to either carry out or defy the reforms. As has been said many times before, hindsight is always 20/20, which made it much easier to film this story with a balanced perspective three decades after the fact.