Laura, 13, is a girl with a strong personality: she does everything to seem older. At school she falls in love with the art teacher, Stefano Malavasi. He, realizing the situation, tries to remedy it by staying as much as possible on the tracks of a correct student/teacher relationship. Laura, feeling rejected, takes revenge.

When her social-climbing father is relocated from a one-horse town to his native Rome, 12-year-old Caterina enrolls in his old school, finding herself adrift in an environment where eighth-graders form friendships based on social class and their parents' political affiliations.

Two couples are enjoying their summer at the beach, but when the grown son of one couple arrives, it surprisingly stirs something in the husband of the other couple, will the forbidden feelings end badly?