影片以一位已婚的工程师和一位意大利女招待员之间的爱情故事为主要线索,试图把社会政治与电影的职能结合起来。工程师是某党的候选人,他的所作所为完全取决于该党为维护候选人形象而制订的竞选策略,更可悲的是他未能真正深入了解这位意大利姑娘,总是把她视为自己的附庸;最后女方断绝了与他的关系。
22 year-old- Yan is trying hard to find his way in life: a job he likes, an ideal. In Saint-Nazaire, his home town, he vegetates, just like his father, an unambitious worker. His fiancée, Juliette, has middle class values and dreams of nothing but a comfortable married life. Dissatisfied, he moves to Paris where he becomes an assembly line worker at the Billancourt Renault car factory. Sick of the working conditions he and his fellow workers have to endure there, he soon turns into a leftist activist...