The film plot takes its starting point from the French play The Human Voice (La Voix humaine, 1930) by Jean Cocteau where a desperate woman tries to avoid being dumped by her lover through a series of phone calls. In the film TV actress Pepa Marcos (Carmen Maura) is depressed and taking sleeping pills because her boyfriend Iván (Fernando Guillén) has just left her. Both she and Iván work as voice-over actors who dub foreign films, notably Johnny Guitar with Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden. The voice he uses to sweet-talk her (and many other women) is the same one he uses in his work. He is about to leave on a trip and has asked Pepa to pack his things in a suitcase that he will pick up later.
Ricky, a 23-year-old psychiatric patient, has been deemed cured and is released from a mental institution. Until then he has been the lover of the woman director of the hospital. An orphan, free, and alone, his goal is to have a normal life with Marina Ozores, an actress, former porn star, and recovering drug addict, whom he once slept with during an escape from the asylum.