In an industrial city by the sea in northern Spain, Carlos(Spanish chameleon Javier Bardem in a stellar performance) and his unemployed friends search daily for life′s emergency exits. For them life is a tightrope walk along waiting rooms, temporary work and employment lines without an audience, without a safety net, without applause. They know about time and how it passes at different speeds, about shame and decorum, they know about despair, pain and silence, they know the value of joy because they know it is scarce, apatch of sunlight in winter. Everyday they tell themselves that it′s all going to change, tomorrow, next week, next month. They imagine that what they′ve been through is just the badly written prologue of what will undoubtedly be a good story of violins and sunsets, of long kisses and tall champagne glasses. However, as they precariously hold their lives together on a rickety scaffolding of hope, these lonely men make a trench of their scarce moments of happiness, settling occasionally forfriendship and warm Mondays in the sun.