Lionel has a way with women. His sexual exploits make his friends jealous. One of them, Alain, challenges him to seduce a beautiful woman picked at random, fall in love with her and spend a night with her — but abstain from making love.

The boy Vito is a portrait of beauty and wide-eyed innocence spawned from a violent family of kidnapers and murderers in the South of Italy. When his entire family is murdered by a rival clan of kidnapers, Vito must flee for his own life and in the end attempts to make atonement for some of his family's sins.