Tropical rain beats down outside a cinema lobby in Rio de Janeiro as Carlos waits for his first date with Julia. She never shows up. A tiny disturbance in the fabric of fate, a commonplace event, barely registered--but one from which alternate realities can spring. Fifteen years later we find Carlos living three lives. In the first, he is a wealthy lawyer with a comfortable but passionless marriage, childless. In the second, he is divorced from Julia, living with Pedro, a sympathetic fellow he met playing soccer. In the third, he lives with his mother and carries on an extended adolescence, sneaking chicks into his bedroom after a night in the bars. Each of Carlos' destinies is challenged by an encounter with a Julia. The first is a reserved and sophisticated beauty whom he meets in an art gallery; the second is the ex-wife with whom the old flame rekindles; the third is a wild, aggressive, and eccentric artist.