The relationships between women: those of friends, housekeeper/servant, student/teacher, and particularly the relationship of mother and daughter as they experience the difficult stages of menopause and adolescence: 47-year-old Tunisian professor Nadia appears fulfilled, but as she enters menopause she struggles with tension in her marriage, the physical and psychological symptoms of aging, and her fraught relationship with her eighteen-year-old daughter, Sarra, who lives her private life in secret.