At a bustling Paris divorce court, Polish barber Karol Karol is desperately pleading with the judge through an interpreter. He learns that his wife, Dominique, no longer loves him because their marriage was never consummated. The judge grants the divorce, and Dominique coldly hands Karol a suitcase containing his belongings before driving away. Stripped of his bank account, passport, and ownership of the salon they ran together, Karol is left with nothing. He breaks into the salon to seek shelter, only to be discovered by Dominique the following morning. Despite their encounter leading to an attempt at intimacy, he again suffers from impotence. Dominique declares that her love for him has faded completely. In a fit of rage, she sets fire to the salon's drapes and frames him for arson, forcing Karol to escape and live as a beggar.
While heartbroken, Karol takes to performing songs with a comb in the Paris Métro and meets fellow Pole Mikołaj. While Karol has lost everything, Mikołaj is married and successful; he proposes a job to Karol that involves killing someone who wishes to end their life but lacks the courage to do so. Karol declines the offer but decides to show Mikołaj Dominique through the window of her apartment. In a devastating twist, he sees her with another man. Overcome with emotion, he calls her from a phone booth, only to hear her in the throes of passion, leading him to a breakdown. In a twist of fate, Mikołaj helps Karol return to Poland discreetly hidden in a suitcase, which is later stolen by airport employees. Upon realizing his predicament, they savagely beat him and abandon him in a dump in the Polish countryside. Eventually, Karol finds his brother Jurek in Warsaw.
Karol soon resumes work at his brother's hair salon and picks up additional employment as a bodyguard in a cash exchange office. While on the job, he uncovers his bosses’ underhanded scheme to acquire land at a low price for future development and resale. Creating a powerful leverage, Karol confronts his former bosses, stating that if they kill him, his estate will go to the church, effectively forcing them to buy land from him instead. Karol then seeks out Mikołaj and accepts the killing job he had previously refused. During their meeting in a dimly lit Warsaw Metro tunnel, Mikołaj reveals that he is the intended target, asking Karol to take his life. In a moment of moral reckoning, Karol shoots a blank into Mikołaj's chest, questioning him if he truly wishes to go through with his decision, leading Mikołaj to rethink and genuinely thank Karol for helping him feel alive again. Mikołaj insists on paying him, claiming that he deserved it for his efforts.
As their relationship flourishes, Karol partners with Mikołaj, becoming ambitious and amassing wealth while mastering his French and grappling with the betrayal by Dominique. One fateful night, after awakening from a dream about her, he reaches out, but she hangs up. Consumed by a desire for revenge, he concocts a plan to give Dominique the majority of his fortune in his will. With the support of Mikołaj, Jurek, and his newfound financial muscle, he stages his own death to frame her for it. On the day of his faked funeral, Karol observes Dominique mourning from a distance. Later, he surprises her in her hotel room, pretending to reconcile before they share an intimate moment. He cleverly departs before she wakes up, only for her to be arrested by the local police under suspicion of having murdered him for his wealth.
In an emotional denouement, Karol visits a prison complex, watching Dominique through her cell window with binoculars. To his surprise, she communicates her desire to remarry him through sign language, stirring deep feelings within him and bringing him to tears.
