The film is focused on the relationship of Malik with his mother Sara in the first weeks after Malik returns home from France to live with his recently widowed French-born mother on the family estate in the wealthy beachfront Tunis suburb, La Marsa. There Malik (Stahly) falls in love with Sara's young handyman, Bilal (Salim Kechiouche), who lives in a servant's bungalow on the estate, and who has also returned recently from a life in France. The French title, Le Fil, refers to Malik's neurotic anxiety, originating in childhood but continuing during the time of the story, manifest in the feeling he is attached at his back to a string that threatens to entangle and strangle him, an anxiety that expresses a troubled and deeply ambivalent relationship with his dominating mother, whom he cannot confront but upon whom he is also fearfully dependent.