The film is set during El Bogotazo, a violent rioting that erupted in Bogotá after the assassination of presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on 9 April 1948.

The story is about an oppressed husband forced by the circumstances to spend the day at his neighbor's home, a lonely, mature schoolteacher.

[1] Newsreel footage shows Colombian presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán speaking to a large crowd.

It is an uncontrollable manifestation of emotion, which grows bigger through the setting of fire to vehicles and buildings.

Among the chaos engulfing the city, Santiago Franco, a middle-aged government employee reaches his apartment in downtown Bogotá.

She has baked a birthday cake for her neighbor Laura, a spinster schoolteacher living in an apartment directly across from them.

She then tells Santiago to go across the street and up to Laura's apartment to deliver the birthday cake.

To kill time Santiago and Laura play cards and listen to some tango songs.

Through the back of the building where she lives, Laura helps Santiago to escape to the streets into a new life.

Believing that her husband has been killed trying to cross the street back home, Josefina comes to Laura's apartment crying.