Florentino, rejected by the beautiful Fermina at a young age, devotes much of his adult life to carnal affairs as a desperate attempt to heal his broken heart.

A traveling mariachi is mistaken for a murderous criminal and must hide from a gang bent on killing him.

A forty-year-old poet wakes up handcuffed to a hospital bed. Accused of his mother's murder, he claims it was an act of love: a plan to aid his mother's death and end his own life at the same time.