Effi Briest, disowned daughter of the german aristocracy, carries a child whose father she doesn't even know. She's delicate, naive, and has the gentle hands of a woman who has only ever held the silk grasp of a butler or attendant. She knows nothing of how ordinary folk survive. And it shows.

It is 1923, in the Weimar Republic of germany, and it is an era of collapse, the state having defaulted on its debts has resulted in the occupation of the Ruhr, germany's industrial heartland and with it, a hyper-inflation of the economy into rapid ruin.

Effi Briest remains frozen in her personal winter of hell, watching as her state falls to chaos, her life now a slow grind of crushing poverty, Effi working herself to the bone with menial Heimarbeit, glueing matchstick boxes so she can afford a single loaf of bread or a small jug of milk. Alone in a empty, cold slum in berlin, spiraling down to her final defeat where she becomes a brothel-girl.

Effi story is of a frozen bud haunted by the shame and winter of her past and crushed by the grim economic realities of her present. She awaits the sun who will break her frost, guiding her to a painful spring of rebirth and redemption.