 A Vietnamese General retires and has difficulty adjusting to civilian life with his extended family. His wife is senile and thinks that the war is still on. His conniving bossy daughter-in-law, Thuy, runs the house, entertains her poet lover, and makes extra money breeding dogs feed on ground-up placentas she steals from the clinic where she works. His thieving lower class half-brother tries to raise money for his pregnant daughter s wedding. The servants, saved from the streets, are sent back to their village against their will, because the General thought that the revolution he fought for was supposed to herald a classless society.