Seen through the eyes of an attractive young wedding singer, it exposes the sexual and social servitude of a group of women in an elaborate palace during the French Protectorate in Tunisia.

[2] Set in 1950s Tunisia, the film is about a 25-year-old woman, Alia, who returns to her place of birth—a prince's palace in which her mother, Khedija, worked as a house servant and mistress.

[4] In her visit to pay respects for the death of the prince, Alia wanders through the largely abandoned palace where she is confronted by these memories represented as detailed flashbacks of her childhood.

[4][1] Her development throughout the film contrasts her awakening to a past of sexual and social servitude which many of the female servants experienced in the palace against her own contested independence fraught with pain, conflict and uncertainty.

"[4] After wider release in 1996, the Los Angeles Times drew attention to Tlati's depiction of feminist issues in Tunisia and praised her "flowing, sensual style", calling the film "brutal" and "tender".