In 1925 Romania, young Marie-Therese Von Debretsy refuses the flirtatious advances of her husband's commanding officer. As a result, the cosmopolitan family is reassigned to a brutally bleak and dangerous outpost on the Bulgarian/Romanian frontier where both their relationship and humanity are severely tested.
A provincial young girl, a farming engineer, does not want to return to the countryside on graduating, but stay in the capital. But she needs a Bucharest identity card to do this. Her solution is to "buy" a husband...