| Director | Miguel Arteta |
|---|---|
| Genre | comedy film |
| Runtime | 83 min |
| Country | United States |
| Box office | $7.4 million |
The film opens with a woman rowing a boat in a mangrove swamp where she encounters a white goat on the shore. Next, Beatriz Blanco, a masseuse, is shown waking up at her Altadena home amongst her various animals. She heads off to a cancer treatment center in Santa Monica where she helps patients with alternative medicine.
After work, Beatriz drives to the Newport Beach home of affluent client Kathy to give her a massage before her dinner party. When Beatriz's car won't start after the massage, Kathy invites Beatriz to stay for the dinner party, to the chagrin of her husband Grant who thinks it's a bad idea because they are entertaining important business connections.
The first guests to arrive are married couple Shannon and Alex, who are about to make a small fortune off of a business venture. Next to arrive is Doug Strutt, the guest of honor and a real estate tycoon, with his wife Jeana. Kathy introduces Beatriz to her friends and explains how they met: Beatriz treated Tara, Kathy and Grant's daughter who is currently away at college. Kathy claims Beatriz's alternative therapies helped Tara beat cancer. When Beatriz learns that a friend won't be able to come help with her car until the morning, Kathy insists that she stay the night.
Interactions between Doug and Beatriz get off to a bad start with Doug mistaking her for one of the house staff members. Beatriz tells Doug he looks familiar to her, and he tells her that because of his various businesses, it is possible she saw him in the news. During dinner, Beatriz discusses how a hotel built in her home state of Guerrero promised jobs and opportunities for her community but ended up destroying it; her family lost their home, and the police killed protesters. Doug admits to having hotels in Mexico, but insists his hotel is not the same one Beatriz describes.
In the living room, tensions come to a head when Doug brags about his hunting of animals while on safari in South Africa and passes around his phone that has a photo of a dead rhinoceros he hunted. When Beatriz sees the photo, she calls the act "disgusting" and hurls the mobile at Doug. She exits the room as Doug laughs it off, saying not everyone can handle the graphic image.
Beatriz apologizes to Kathy and promises to make it up to her, with Kathy recommending she go to bed early. Beatriz goes to Tara's room, where she Googles Doug on the computer. The search results reveal that Doug's businesses have been involved in various controversies and legal problems. Beatriz then decides to rejoin the guests on the patio and brings a guitar with her. She sings a song titled "Las simples cosas," telling the guests it is about "how we always want to go back to the places where we loved life, but the old, simple things are now gone."
After the song, she and Doug again trade words, with Doug insisting on the idea of manifest destiny, and Beatriz arguing that instead of hunting and killing, he should try healing. When the argument escalates and Beatriz calls out the privilege of the guests, Grant angrily tells her she needs to leave immediately and he will call a tow truck for her. Kathy tries to give Beatriz money, but she rejects it.
Doug follows Beatriz outside the house and tells her she should lighten up and not take things so seriously. Beatriz reiterates her certainty that she knows him from somewhere. When the truck arrives, Beatriz gets in, but she leaves to retrieve something from the house. She goes to Grant's office and picks up a letter opener, then charges at Doug who is in the foyer talking on the phone. She stabs him in the throat, and the other guests run to him, horrified. However, the sequence is revealed to be a fantasy, as Beatriz simply drops the letter opener and gets back in the truck. As the truck drives alongside the ocean, Beatriz asks the driver to pull over. She gradually walks to the beach and submerges herself in the water. She reawakens in her boat on the mangrove swamp of the film's opening.