José Luis Cuevas

When a young boy steals billiard balls from a local saloon, a stranger is charged with the crime. The local layabouts find there is no reason to hang out at the bar without being able to shoot pool, and the boy entertains thoughts of forming a gang to steal more billiard balls in hopes of making money.

In the 1920s, Mexico was still in a state of near-chaos. Rebellions and revolutions had followed one after the other for decades. Though things were beginning to settle down some, it was still a time when one had the feeling that anything could happen.

Several lives intertwine: those of a group of vandals, a drug addict, and a girl who works as a waitress in a restaurant where her mother cooks.

Victor and Elena are newlyweds and lead a busy social life. While Victor is cultured and quiet, Elena is beautiful, brilliant and restless, constantly criticized by her mother, also named Elena, who is very refined, correct and bourgeois. The three of them will be involved in a rather ambiguous and at the same time terribly moving moment in their lives.