Miguel, a 7-year-old boy, lives with three generations of estranged women in an old house. Among them his mother who, adrift with the trauma of her divorce, distances herself from the boy. Miguel takes refuge in Carmen, an enigmatic Venezuelan immigrant who works as a maid for the Brazilian family. Carmen becomes an ambiguous mother figure for the boy, who develops an intimate and unusual bond with her, triggering his inner world and introducing him to a universe in which the real and the imaginary intertwine.