Set against the backdrop of the seedy districts of Paris, this mystery unfolds alongside actual events of a 1980s garment workers' struggle. In the neighborhood of Le Sentier, where sweatshops turn out the haute couture of the well-heeled, foreign workers keep inhuman hours under repressive management and the constant threat of police brutality. When a young, Thai worker is found dead in a factory and an erotic video club's membership is threatened with exposure, investigators are lead into the immigrant slums, the heroin trade, and a morally ambiguous world of informers, prostitutes, and laborers.