A fight over the calf of a prize milk cow in the close-knit, traditional Pas Valley of Cantabria leaves a cantankerous dairy farmer dead and another fearful of arrest.
He and his daughter Val conspire to keep the cause of death quiet, but tensions mount when Val becomes attracted to the dead farmer's son Rai, estranged from his father and now a hairdresser in the city.
The tensions open long-festering family resentments and spur the lurid imagination of Val's teenage sister Genia.
"What goes unsaid, gets undone," the Pasiegos say, but is it true? Is there harm in staying silent?