An aging singer (Paredes) returns home after many years to reconnect with her estranged daughter (Abril). Her daughter has found success in her career as a television newscaster and in love with the owner of the TV station, who also happens to be one of her mother’s ex-boyfriends. When he turns up dead, the relationship between the two women faces its greatest test. Drawing explicitly from Hollywood’s great women’s movies of the 1940s, Almodóvar lovingly brings to life his heroines who embody both presentational performance and sacrificial integrity.