Helge (Henning Moritzen), a respected businessman and family patriarch, is celebrating his 60th birthday at the family-run hotel. Gathered together amongst a large party of family and friends are his wife Else (Birthe Neumann), his sullen eldest son Christian (Ulrich Thomsen), his boorish younger son Michael (Thomas Bo Larsen), and his well-traveled daughter Helene (Paprika Steen). Another sibling, Linda, has recently taken her life at the hotel. Helene finds Linda's suicide note, but hides it in a medicine bottle after becoming upset by the undisclosed contents. Michael fights with his wife, whom he had earlier abandoned on the roadside with their three children, and then has sex with her. He later beats a waitress of the hotel after she pulls him aside to discuss that he had impregnated her in an affair.