Rose Morgan, who still lives with her mother, is a professor of Romantic Literature who desperately longs for passion in her life. Gregory Larkin, a mathematics professor, has been burned by passionate relationships and longs for a sexless union based on friendship and respect.
A brutal Los Angeles police lieutenant is determined to bust up an organization that forces underage girls into prostitution.
Margo is an ex-stripper who meets her long, lost father in Mexico. She looks after him in the waning days of his life, with the help of a traveling projectionist. The father passes away, telling of the loot from a botched bank robbery that he buried years earlier. The two get jobs in town as their relationship grows and they search for the treasure on the weekends. But while the treasure seems to bring them together, it also seems to be tearing them apart.