André, fifty years old, the son of Spanish parents but living in Portugal since childhood, lives in a beautiful house by the seaside, in a fishing village. Since he was young, he has lived in the company of Ana, his housekeeper, only a few years older than him. As he is about to divorce, André refuses the idea of leaving the house and its furniture, as his wife suggests when she visits him accompanied by an antique dealer. At that time, on the eve of the village festival, André meets Eva, who has arrived from Lisbon to take charge of the summer camp. They meet several times on the beach and fall in love. These two critical and exceptional events serve as a pretext for the dramatic evocation of obsessive childhood memories: the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, his father's departure, his mother's refusal to join him, her love affairs with a man from the village, and, above all, her fatal illness.