Buenos Aires, 24 December 1999. A hot night, stifling and humid. It's already an hour to midnight. The streets are crammed with people desperate to finish their last-minute shopping. At the height of decadence, the middle classes in Argentina insist on celebrating a holiday that has completely lost all its religious meaning. Buenos Aires is a city out of control which has grown well beyond any town plan. Its inhabitants have gradually lost the ability to feel anything in common, often becoming selfish, suspicious and violent. This is the setting for the story of three people who, on one of the most important days in the Christian year, find themselves pretending to be better, united and happy, and pretending to celebrate. And yet this urge is by no means natural, it is imposed by the spirit of the occasion which will only help bring out selfishness and misery that neither the spectators nor they themselves would ever have imagined.