This broadly plotted as he articulates his way over the ditch of adolescence in 1950s 26, narrative follows the life of 15-year-old Laurent Chevalier. After having his first sexual experience with a prostitute and dodging the lips of a priest, Chevalier contracts a case of scarlet fever. Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, together with his cheating and over-attentive mother, when the fever leaves him with a heart murmur.