Ambitious Mara has two goals: power and money. Since there is no direct path to neither due to her lack of education, she has to achieve her goals indirectly through men. Madame Pompadour is her unequalled idol. But then she unexpectedly falls in love with a young musician who, however, only exploits her feelings. From then on she sells her own grandmother… Tokarjewa draws a psychologically sensitive and tragicomic picture of a modern Russian ›femme fatale‹.