In the upscale Toronto strip club Exotica, dancer Christina is visited nightly by the obsessive Francis, a depressed tax auditor. Her ex-boyfriend, the club’s MC, Eric, still jealously pines for her even as he introduces her onstage, but Eric is having his own relationship problems with the club’s owner, Zoe. Meanwhile Thomas, a mysterious pet-shop owner, is about to become unexpectedly involved in their lives. Gradually, connections between the traumatic pasts of these characters are revealed.

This essay film tells of the ocean as a place of yearning, of the world of giant container ships and their crews, and the women that wait for them in ports and drinking holes. The protagonists’ thoughts are rendered as inner monologues in voiceover, all set to striking documentary images. Sandy represents all the women willing to give themselves to strange men, the perfect complement for the desire of all those roaming restlessly from port to port. The film has an affectionate eye for this eccentric former prostitute, for her body marked by life, lust, and the men she’s met, as well as for her free, yet romantic idea of love. She is a siren and Penelope in equal measure.

An exotically beautiful Sotho actress, Kedibone Manamela, chooses to live her youth on the fast lane. Veiled from her loyal childhood boyfriend’s eyes, she bounces between being a good girl in the township and the ‘it’ girl on the high end of Johannesburg streets. A dark threat looms over the day when the news of Kedibone’s escapades reaches the young man.