Passion and ambition interplay to bring dissention and tragedy into the home of an old fisherman married to a much younger woman.

The Soares are a bourgeois couple, living in a good neighbourhood of Lisbon, but João, their son, is not integrating well in that pattern. He attends more political meetings than classes at the Faculty of Economy, and gets a job but that's short lived because his female boss makes him her lover. He longs for the coffee shops, and the companions of old, but he doesn't get true love from anyone.