What is beautiful about adolescence is that it is a time when everything is still possible. The four main characters are each conditioned by their background and environment, but they refuse to accept any predestination and to fight it. Expelled from schools, spurned by lovers, confined by identity these youngsters just keep on running, frustrated and in flames. Lonely hearts, intoxicated by music and alcohol, by the heat of minds and bodies, burn to ashes.

A second trial begins in November 1975 against French left-wing revolutionary Pierre Goldman, accused of several armed robberies and the death of two chemists.