Ferdinando, a bank employee who came from the north and prospered, buys a car and starts to frequent the south zone of Rio de Janeiro. He meets Lucia, with whom he falls in love, to the point of selling his own car to pay the girl's bill, who says she is very rich and lives in a mansion, but it's all a farce.

Unemployed, penniless in the big city and after accidentally stealing and killing his landlady, Antonio flees Rio de Janeiro towards Northeast of Brazil to find his mother. On the way he meets a beautiful woman and a pair of criminals.