 Gervaise Macquart, a young lame laundress, is left by his lover Auguste Lantier with two boys... She manages to make it, and a few years later she marries Coupeau, a zinc worker. After working very hard a few more years, she succeeds buying his own laundry (her dream)... But Coupeau started to drink after being fallen from a roof, and Lantier shows up... A faithful adaptation of Emile Zola s novel "L Assomoir", depicting the fatal degeneration of a family of workers, mainly because of alcohol.