In 1931 Berlin, young American Sally Bowles performs at the Kit Kat Klub. A new British arrival in the city, Brian Roberts, moves into the boarding house where Sally lives. A reserved Academia and writer, Brian gives English lessons to earn a living, while completing his doctorate. Sally tries seducing Brian, and suspects he may be gay. Brian tells Sally that on three previous occasions he has tried to have sexual relationships with women, all of which failed. They become friends, and Brian witnesses Sally's anarchic, Bohemianism life in the last days of the Weimar Republic. Sally and Brian become lovers, despite their earlier reservations; they conclude that his previous failures with women were because they were "the wrong three girls".