Valeria has a long list of things she disapproves of. Whistling, tropical fruit, free-market capitalism, and the mayor of her Hungarian village top that list. And Valeria especially doesn’t believe in love past a certain age. Until she bumps into the potter, a widower with white hair and a thick mustache. Suddenly Valeria, the village’s least popular senior citizen, finds herself awash in an unfamiliar feeling: desire.

The potter is equally surprised to respond to Valeria’s overtures; he was enjoying a casual affair with Ibolya, the proprietress of the village’s only tavern. But Valeria inspires the potter to reinvent himself as an artist: he makes her the most beautiful pottery the village has ever seen, then moves on to bigger, less fragile projects. Ibolya tries to break up this unlikely love affair by enlisting an itinerant chimney sweep to distract Valeria. But Ibolya doesn’t count on the chimney sweep’s violent tendencies. The villagers will never be the same after the powerful forces of modern capitalism and old-fashioned sexual desire sweep through town.