The film tracks one summer in the life of an indolent 20-year-old poet, whose days are spent writing, talking, listening to Maria Callas and floating in a drug-induced stupor. Ignoring his mother's reprimands about idleness, he drifts between encounters with friends and various lovers, consciously opting to pull back and mull over the world from a distance rather than grapple with the uncertain realities of living in the post-Soviet Kazakh capital.