In a cemetery on the Day of the Dead, the lawyer Talamantes is going to place a cross on his mother's grave.
There, he meets with other assistants who commemorate his relatives: a bricklayer, a poet, the shoemaker Zacarías, the plumber Baltazar and the hairdresser Pedro, with their respective families.
In the heat of alcohol, they all argue, show their weaknesses, resolve disagreements in couples, fight, flirt, reconcile and swear each other eternal friendship.
In an interview collected in the book Memorias de posguerra: Diálogos con la cultura del exilio by Manuel García García, director Luis Alcoriza described his film thus, "[L]a película salió muy dura.
Era una agresión frontal al sistema y a la moral dominante.