Charming and talented Alex dreams of becoming a professional saxophonist while working long hours in the family bakery. Detlef, lonely, repressed, and a small-time Stasi informer, develops an obsessive love for him. But Alex has eyes only for Nicky, an English woman visiting East Berlin as an au pair. With no natural outlet for his feelings, Detlef's passion becomes destructive, his need for approval enmeshed with the latent homophobia of the regime. As Alex's band becomes more successful, he moves closer to influences considered subversive by a state that has eyes and ears everywhere, and Detlef's passions threaten to endanger all of them all.