A sweltering Viennese summer serves as the backdrop for several interlocking stories of lonely, damaged and often cruel people struggling through their isolated lives. The film moves between couples trapped in bitter, loveless relationships, a woman obsessed with a man who wants nothing to do with her, and various other characters adrift in the featureless suburbs. Seidl presents these vignettes with a cool, documentary-like detachment, exposing the quiet brutality and emptiness beneath ordinary domestic existence.