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.

In Marseilles a skilled pizza delivery boy Daniel who drives a scooter finally has his dreams come true. He gets a taxi license. Caught by the police for a huge speed infraction, he will help Emilien, a loser inspector who can't drive, on the track of German bank robbers, so he doesn't lose his license and his dream job.

A cabdriver and a cop race to Paris to rescue a love interest and the Japanese minister of defense from kidnappers.

Following a fight that goes wrong, Tigre, Chalouf, and Sainte-Croix, all three students at a vocational high school in Marseille, decide to leave everything behind. "Freedom, freedom, I write your name," they don't know Eluard, but they heard the poem in class and the word freedom touched them. They steal a BMW, a classic move, set off on an adventure, talk a lot and get into a few fights. Chalouf, the tender one, loves Marie, a girl he met by chance in the Old Port. Marie lives in Briançon. No matter! Off they go to Briançon...