There comes a time in every young athlete's life when he or she must weigh the value of training against the isolation from the activities of other youths. In this French movie, Sonia Petrova plays a young ballerina pondering this question. Her teacher is incredibly strict and stern, and the regimen she requires is all-encompassing. She explores the alternatives through the help of a hip young male student of modern dance, with whom she has a brief affair, but decides to continue with her classical training.

A single mother raises her son in impossible circumstances first in Leningrad, then Krakow, and then France, and is over-ambitious about him but never gives in.