Bangladeshi 20 year old Beauty, having resisted her parents' insistence she marry young and in the family tradition, is forced onto the jobseekers' treadmill. Her fractious encounters with officialdom, fellow claimants, strangers and passers-by in the city streets, exacerbated by the restrictions (and comfort) of her own language and culture, place her at the mercy of unlikely helpers such as Mark, a friendly, dog-owning, Sun-reading wide boy, Jamaican Delford and Peter, a middle-class dropout on the rebound from a bitter relationship.