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.