After an eighteen-month separation, John arrives in New York City ready to have his famous figure-skating ex-wife-to-be, Elena, sign the divorce papers, but he soon discovers that she is unhappy and she asks him to stay. John learns that David, Elena's manager, has had her cloned, and now there are three duplicates of her to stand in if she should be killed or injured.

Knowing this secret puts both him and Elena in grave danger, and they are soon on the run from David and his henchmen.

With finely tuned performances as his starting point, Vinterberg skilfully manages to create a world that superficially appears far removed from our present. In this world fatal diseases freeze the hearts of people who experience loss, loneliness leaves them shells of human waste, and there are reports of flash ice ages and gravity loss. Yet, these are handled with a level of realism to give it a far deeper resonance and relation to our own.