In sepia tones, the film moves back and forth among three periods in Robert Tucker's life he's an old man, near death, in a nursing home at Christmas time; he's in middle age caring for his cheerful but dying mother; he's a lad at Catholic school, practicing his catechism, going to confession for the first time, receiving the Eucharist, surrounded by the singing of a children's choir. In middle age, he looks through his scrapbook of photographs of muscular men; he recalls lovers and his mother's cremation. A nurse sits beside him on his last night; in his last breath, he reaches forward and back..
The story follows a woman who lives an orderly life in a religious community until her brother arrives. The leader of the community knows about their difficult upbringing and insists that they resolve their childhood trauma through the therapeutic rituals
