Ricardo Azolar is looking for the right words, the exact phrases that will give him literary glory. The days are sterile and lacking in those brilliant ideas that should allow him to express through narrative, the fertile flow arising from the imagination. Until he meets Lisbeth, venus and intoxicating muse who nevertheless compels him to write irrelevant and devoid of any imagination literary texts.
Based on the novel by Venezuelan writer Enrique Bernardo Núñez, the film tells the story of engineer Leiziaga discovering his historical doubles in the context of the colonization of the island of Cubagua in Venezuela. In this way, two stories are intertwined: one that takes place in the 16th century and another in the 20th century. The first story focuses on the life of the Spanish settlers who arrived in Cubagua and the exploitation of the indigenous peoples for pearl extraction; the second story, set in the 1920s, tells of Leiziaga's archaeological expedition, financed by a multinational oil company, in which he visits the island to study the ruins of the Spanish settlement, which leads him to reflect on the passage of time and the destruction caused by human exploitation, and through a game of mirrors, to realize the relationships between the past, present and future.
Out of the blue, a meek, old painter begins receiving love letters from Rosaura. This intrigues his fellow boarding house tenants, so they involve themselves into his relationship until one day the mysterious Rosaura appears.
The protagonist commits a crime and abandons his brother, on whom the shadow of suspicion falls, to avoid punishment. In his escape he meets for the first time the emotion of a true love, but fatality takes it upon himself, pushing him back onto the criminal path.
Several individual stories converge in the imposing setting of the southernmost tip of the continent, all of them involving a crisis of faith. Most of the important situations in the film are based on real episodes, such as the massacre of indigenous people perpetrated by the landowners in the area.