Juli is a 17-year-old student who takes a summer job in a local chemical factory. She is befriended by Piri, a girl with an unsavory reputation who has worked there before. The two friends are ogled by male workers who have overactive libidos and imaginations. Juli spurns the advances of a deluded Romeo while Piri continues to work and endure open hostility from the older female workers while her slothful parents sink deeper into alcoholism.

Three thirtysomething chemical scientists, Laci, Gyuri and Kati celebrate the success of their development program before New Year's Eve with drinking for several days. But the morning of New Year's Eve does not bring the expected recognition, because the nice, bald, old director is replaced by a young, bald, but disagreeable one. In a sodden atmosphere it becomes clear that everybody has an axe to grind in the informative discussions.

Juli, who works in a brick factory, begins a romantic relationship with her boss, to whom she hides the fact that she has a son.

Allegory of the suppression of the 1919 revolution and the advent of fascism in Hungary; in the countryside, a unit of the revolutionary army spares the life of father Vargha, a fanatical priest. He comes back and leads massacres. A new force, represented by Feher, apparently avenges the people, but only to impose a different, more refined and effective kind of repression.