Jorge de Oliveira is an Afro-Brazilian poet who works in a publicity agency in São Paulo. Torn between his rich white lovers and his black family and friends, Jorge's situation serves as a springboard to a discussion about racial issues in Brazil.
In an institution for the blind, a man rails against his misfortune, his energy and thinking distorted by a need to fight his blindness. Unhappy and unable to come to grips with his condition, he stirs a sympathetic chord in another blind inmate. She in turn, slowly enters into a relationship with him that starts to transform the ways he perceives himself and his blindness.
The film refers to the "gray neighborhoods", called in Argentina "villas miseria", in which the less qualified workers or those who have recently arrived from the rural areas live in the industrial cordons.