Simon and Dede are best friends: two aimless drunks who spend their days getting sloshed and any other available time getting laid. Simon is living on unemployment benefits in a trailer parked near his sister's apartment. Dede works at a fish-packing plant on the night shift. Neither man is sensitive, young, or good looking. However, their sang-froid (literally, "cold blood," referring to a quality of imperturbability) stands them in good stead as they go about their seedy lives, picking up one woman and having sex with her on the beach, or when Simon calmly has sex with a prostitute in front of the woman's brother. In the past, a bizarre necrophiliac situation led to Simon experiencing his only sense of what it might be to truly love someone.
In French Algeria, after WWII, three daughters of wealthy settlers begin their adult lives. Zon marries an often absent sailor. Malene's husband, Gildas, refuses to work in the farm, so she has to take care of everything. Gritte, the youngest, does not want to marry and is a nurse for the natives. We will follow their three different destinies.
건축 기사인 빌 마캄은 아마존댐 건설 중 정글에서 일곱살난 아들 토미를 잃어버리고 고독한 탐색 작업을 한다. 10년간의 추적 끝에 토미의 실종이 인디오와 관계있음을 알게 된 그는 아마존을 탐색하다 어느 큰 폭포앞에 이르른다. 그 때 갑자기 기분 나쁜 소리가 들려오고 인디오들이 빌을 습격하기 시작하지만, 어디선가 날아온 화살이 그를 구한다.
