Budapest in the thirties. The restaurant owner Laszlo hires the pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody triggers off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans goes and falls in love with Ilona as well.

The film has a broken meaning, the last time he was a proofreader for a book publisher, he is now unemployed. Ever since he was a child, he has always been the one who pulls the short one, and he takes the wrong one. At the beginning of the film, he finds himself in such a "bunbak" situation again, and then he decides to become a professional bunbak...