Budapest in the thirties. The restaurant owner Laszlo hires the pianist Andras to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires Andras to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody triggers off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic menage a trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans goes and falls in love with Ilona as well.