 In Rio de Janeiro of the 80 s, Maria Cecilia, the virgin seventeen years old daughter of the wealthy and powerful Dr. Werneck, is raped by five black men when her car has an engine problem nearby an isolated junkyard. Her upper class family decides that Maria Cecilia needs to get married, and Werneck assigns his manager Peixoto to find a fiancee among the employees of the family s company. Peixoto selects Edgard, a simple and single man, and offers him an unusual proposal: if he gets married with Maria Cecília, he would receive a huge amount, as a gift or dowry. However, Edgard has a crush on his neighbor Ritinha and has his own moral principles. An inner fight between greed and moral values divides Edgard, while revelations about Ritinha, Maria Cecilia and Peixoto are disclosed to him, ending in a tragedy.