The twenty-year standstill in the career of Pieter, Pierre Bokma, an openly gay art historian who works as an archivist for a small municipality, has left him largely invisible to his colleagues. On his birthday, as a petty act of “revenge” against a world that ignores him, he keeps taking one painting from the depot in the cellar. The routine is challenged when Brest, his boss's boss, Eric Schneider, invites Vermeulen, Genio de Groot, out for a meal and hints at a potential turn for Pieter—yet the conversation quickly pivots to a crisis: Pieter must return the eight paintings by Van Goppels who died recently, paintings that suddenly hold a great deal of value. The catch is painful and practical: Pieter has already sold four of the Van Goppels to cover his own debts and pay his apartment, forcing him into a desperate moral and financial bind.
Pieter’s only real lifelines are his old student friends, Joep and Tom. Joep, Gijs Scholten van Aschat, is a politician poised to become Minister for Foreign Affairs, a career milestone that complicates any attempt to help Pieter. He is also dealing with a fractured personal life: his wife Conny, Elsie de Brauw, has left him after an affair with Jennie, and Joep had hoped to take shelter at Tom’s place. Tom, Peter Blok, an attorney by trade, wants to take on Pieter’s case, but his own psyche is fraying. Once renowned for steadiness, Tom has descended into a cocaine-fueled fever that leaves him unstable and dangerous, a stark contrast to the careful world Pieter hopes to restore.
Into this tense mosaic comes Maarten, Jaap Spijkers, a friend whose pretentious stage ambitions collide with the others’ lives. Maarten’s new play, “The Wheel of Ixion,” is about to open, and Joep’s nearly adult daughter is cast to perform the nude role of Laura. This revelation unsettles Joep, who is already under pressure from his political ascent and his marriage. The social circle’s cracks widen as Joep, Maarten, and the group navigate loyalties, futures, and the fraught lines between art, artifice, and reality.
To celebrate Joep’s birthday, the friends hire a prostitute for him, a decision that triggers an emotional storm: Joep is moved, and Maarten’s own longing surfaces in a moment of conflict that ends in a heated brawl. The night overshadows the hopes of reconciliation, and the group attends Maarten’s premiere anyway. Joep’s worries about his daughter fade as the performance unfolds, and a possible personal reconciliation with Conny flickers into view—only to be interrupted by the looming dread of their unresolved past. Tom, already unwell, slips deeper into the city’s underworld in search of cocaine, while Pieter persists in trying to secure a formal attestation from colleagues that the Van Goppels were indeed given to him, a key hinge in his attempt to legitimize his decades of theft.
As the narrative threads converge, the friends confront the distance between their former camaraderie and the choices that pull them apart. Joep, now stepping into a new cultural role as Minister for Culture, ultimately withdraws from the struggle—his political ascent severing his ability to intervene. Tom’s breakdown becomes undeniable, Maarten remains a man waiting on news that won’t come, and Pieter’s precarious plan collapses under pressure. In a final, devastating moment, Pieter returns home only to enact a traumatic act, cutting one of his arteries in the bathroom, leaving the fate of the paintings, his career, and their fragile friendships hanging in the balance.
