Ernest, multilingual Elias is a budding novelist who quates Keats and ekes out a living as a translator along the seedy docklands of 1952 Buenos Aires. He's sleeping with the well-off Susana who tries to further his career by taking him to bourgeois soirees. But Elias is more interested in translating letters from foreign boyfriends of illiterate prostitutes who work out of the Black Cat nightclub, oftentimes using his writing talents to change their words of heartbreak or betrayal into psalms of love and affection. Elias makes friends with an elderly communist who is still wanted by the police and slowly becomes attracted to the streetwise, straight-talking Anabel. The pace quickens with the arrival of Anabel's sailor boyfriend and Elias' realisation that the Black Cat is actually more than it seems.