Ramata is a spellbindingly beautiful woman in her fifties. She has been married for thirty years now to Matar Samb, a very rich man, a former prosecutor who is now Minister of Justice. They live in Les Almadies, an elegant neighborhood of Dakar. Ngor Ndong is twenty-five. He is young, strong, mysterious and homeless. He is an occasional petty crook, known to the police. One evening, in a taxi that Ngor Ndong just happens to be driving, Ramata, reticent at first, finally agrees to follow this young man half her age to the Copacabana, a dive in the seediest part of Dakar.