Martta and Otto are a pair of traveling tailors who claim to be bastard descendents of the Romanovs and wander from town to town in Finland seeking work, accompanied by their two half-witted adult sons, Hippo , Repe and equally silly son-in-law Ventti. The family occasionally turns to crime when they can't quite make ends meet, and the boys begin turning to violence with greater frequency when Otto weakens and Martta becomes the head of the family business. Their fortunes take an unexpected turn when the brothers assault and abduct a man they call Kaspar, who becomes the family's sidekick in their travels. Despite Kaspar's inability to speak, he attracts Martha's youngest daughter, an attractive young woman named Lara, but the family is in disarray when a long-lost half-brother, Laszlo, suddenly re-emerges and tries to wrest control of the clan away from his mother.