In a post-nuclear, oxygen-ridden future, humble cleaner Juliette has her loyalties tested when she falls for Adam, a captive merman whose gills are mankind's last hope for survival.

Benny (Joe Maruzzo) and his girlfriend Alma (Sylvia Kristel) own a nightclub in the red light district of Amsterdam. Everything’s going well until Charley (Ellen ten Damme) starts working in the club.

One day, Tim (Roy Ward) stops to speak with one of those men with no apparent income and no apparent place of residence who can be seen on the streets of Amsterdam and who are ready to speak of profundities and mock-profundities at the drop of a hat. This particular man tells him that "people don't die, they get killed." For some reason, this strikes the lonely television repairman as profound. He has been building a ham radio at home out of spare parts so that he will have someone to talk to. Shortly after talking to the street person, his circle of friends is diminished by one when his friend Alex is reported to have killed himself. This in itself is a bit of a mystery, and Tim attempts to make sense of it by talking to a lawyer, Alex's girlfriend, and others.

De Mantel der Liefde is a bizarre, over the top and at times hilarious settling of scores with the Catholic Church, commercial movie culture and 1970's petit bourgeois Dutch culture in general.