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.
O engenheiro norte-americano Bill Markham está no Brasil com a família, trabalhando na construção de uma grande hidrelétrica na Floresta Amazônica. A obra exige a devastação de áreas verdes, expulsando as comunidades da região. Uma tribo indígena conhecida como "Invisible People" sequestra Tommy, filho de Bill com apenas sete anos de idade. Passam-se 10 anos e o engenheiro não desistiu de procurar pela criança, que, por sua vez, vive com a tribo e adotou seu idioma e seus costumes.
