The film is focused on the relationship of Malik with his mother Sara in the first weeks after Malik returns home from France to live with his recently widowed French-born mother on the family estate in the wealthy beachfront Tunis suburb, La Marsa.

There Malik (Stahly) falls in love with Sara's young handyman, Bilal (Salim Kechiouche), who lives in a servant's bungalow on the estate, and who has also returned recently from a life in France.

The French title, Le Fil, refers to Malik's neurotic anxiety, originating in childhood but continuing during the time of the story, manifest in the feeling he is attached at his back to a string that threatens to entangle and strangle him, an anxiety that expresses a troubled and deeply ambivalent relationship with his dominating mother, whom he cannot confront but upon whom he is also fearfully dependent.

Malik befriends Bilal, a 25 year old also recently returned from France to Tunisia, who does odd jobs and gardening for Sara and lives in the servants' quarters on the estate.

The two make love, but Sara discovers the pair in bed together the next morning, forcing Malik to decide to try to form a relationship with Bilal; Sara begins her own journey of acceptance even as the two lovers depart on a road trip to the countryside where their intimacy and bond grows.