Based on the novella by Ian McEwan, it is the story of Florence and Edward (Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle), young university graduates getting married in 1962. She is a talented and ambitious classical musician from a well-to-do family and he is a clever young man from humbler origins. Both have first-class degrees and, in consequence, no small opinion of themselves. The wedding night is a painful, intimately humiliating fiasco with devastating consequences.