The film takes place an unspecified number of months after the Munich Massacre in West Germany. Emmi (Mira), a 60 year-old window cleaner and widow, enters a bar, driven in by the rain and wanting to listen to the music being played inside. A woman in the bar (Katharina Herberg) tauntingly suggests Ali (Salem), a Morocco ''Gastarbeiter'' (guest worker) in his late thirties, ask Emmi to dance, to which Emmi accepts. After they dance, they develop a friendship and Ali follows Emmi home, staying at her apartment for the night. After some more interaction between the two, they start to fall in love and Ali continues to live with Emmi. Emmi decides to visit her children to introduce them to Ali; daughter Krista (Irm Hermann) and her tyrannical son-in-law Eugen (Fassbinder himself); Eugen thinks she is losing her sanity and Krista thinks that her mother - who has been a widow for years - is fantasizing.