A junior screenwriter called Juan Garofalo is hired by film director Samuel Goldszer to write his new film: a gangster movie set in Buenos Aires. In each meeting, the filmmakers create a story that takes place in an imaginary Pompeya neighborhood. So the characters are born: Dylan, the brutal hero of the underworld, Timmy, his disturbed, deaf-mute brother, and Lana, the femme fatale who begins the love triangle. But Pompeya hides a secret and is disputed by the Russian and Korean mafia, and Dylan is caught in a sequence of bloody crimes. Dylan fights for survival while Juan, his creator, lives with greed and misery the experience of an imaginary system of evil powers. And when pure fiction and reality are completely corrupted, the unexpected happens.

Mariano, 16, inexplicably and without warning, shoots himself twice and improbably survives. Then, life goes on. His brother pursues a romance with a girl working at a fast-food joint, his mother takes off on a trip with a stranger, and Mariano recruits a woman to join his medieval wind ensemble.