After a hot and steamy company party, Sibylle and Harald, both in their late thirties, spend the night together. He is a widower with two sons, with the younger son just entering school. She is single and relatively satisfied in her current relationship with a married colleague. 

When they meet again later, they resolve to enter into a strictly intellectual relationship. Suddenly, Sibylle quits her job at the company's staff canteen and delves into her new self-appointed task with fiery fervor: pepping up Harald's family life and turning his house and garden inside out. Harald, a quiet man used to peace and his own habits, starts to flee from her on a daily basis.

Without love, Sibylle assumes, their somewhat unusual relationship will not work out. But it does not take long for the pair to miss each other's presence.