Rebeca Marisa Paredes waits anxiously at a Madrid airport for the return of her mother, Becky del Páramo, a famous torch singer, who is coming back to Spain after a fifteen-year stay in Mexico. While she waits, Rebeca revisits memories from her own childhood, when her mother, absorbed in her career and romantic entanglements, often neglected and rejected her.
Becky [Victoria Abril] del Páramo, a luminous stage icon, embodies both glamour and emotional distance, and her long absence helped shape Rebeca’s drive and self-image. Rebeca is now a news broadcaster for a TV station owned by her husband, Manuel, and the reunion becomes even more tangled because Manuel was once Becky’s lover. On Becky’s night of return, Rebeca escorts Becky and Manuel to a show featuring Femme Letal (Lethal Woman), a female impersonator who portrays Becky in his drag act. For some time, Rebeca has followed Letal’s impersonation with fascination. That night, while Manuel and Becky stay in the audience, at Letal’s urging, Rebeca goes backstage to help Letal remove his costume. Seeing the impersonator naked, Rebeca is struck by his body. When Rebeca admits that she and Manuel have not had sex in five months, Letal seizes the moment to seduce her. Meanwhile, Manuel confesses to Becky that he intends to divorce the “difficult” Rebeca, and he and Becky soon resume their affair.
A month passes, and Manuel is found dead at his getaway villa. He had spent the evening first with his mistress, Isabel (Rebeca’s sign-language interpreter on the news), and then with Becky, who had come to confront him about his infidelities. Rebeca arrives to report the discovery of the body. The investigating magistrate, Judge Domínguez, aware of the tangled web of loyalties and betrayals, suspects both mother and daughter.
During Manuel’s funeral, Rebeca confesses to his murder live on television, and is arrested on camera. The investigating judge seems determined to prove her innocence despite the mounting evidence against her. Rebeca spends her first night in prison as Becky returns to the Madrid stage. In prison, Rebeca listens to the radio, hearing Becky dedicate her triumphant performance to her daughter. Paula, a social worker who shares a similar heartbreak over a lost love named Hugo, takes a special interest in Rebeca. Seeing Hugo’s picture carried by Paula, Rebeca theorizes that Letal and Hugo might be the same man.
Judge Domínguez arranges for Becky to see Rebeca privately, and Rebeca flips between guilt and denial about Manuel’s murder. She draws a parallel between her life and the daughter in Autumn Sonata, where a mother’s brilliance is shadowed by a stern, humiliating demand for perfection. Rebeca admits that she has long felt inferior to Becky, having competed with her and “winning” only by marrying Manuel, a victory that Becky later took away. She reveals that fifteen years earlier, as a child, she killed her stepfather to be closer to Becky, and she killed Manuel because he threatened her mother’s affection. Becky urges her to find a healthier way to address her issues with men, warning that her fixation and almost obsessive adoration are too much for her frail heart.
With the situation already precarious, the prison doctor reveals that Rebeca is pregnant—an outcome that could only be with Letal’s child—prompting the judge to release her despite a lack of new evidence. Rebeca goes to witness Letal’s advertised final drag performance, only to discover that Letal is Judge Domínguez, who had assumed various disguises—Letal and Hugo—in separate cases as part of an investigative strategy. The judge, aware of Rebeca’s pregnancy, asks her to marry him. As they absorb this revelation, a television report breaks the news of Becky’s sudden heart attack.
The reluctant trio races to the hospital, where Becky asks for Rebeca’s forgiveness and accepts responsibility for Manuel’s murder as a form of redemption. When Becky is brought home to die, Rebeca gives her the gun and Becky leaves her fingerprints on it, thereby incriminating herself. The final soundscape—high-heeled strides echoing in the street—reminds Rebeca of her mother coming home as a child. She turns around and discovers that her mother has died while she spoke.
