This loosely plotted as he stumbles his way over the burgeoning ditch of sin at 1950s France tale follows the life span of Laurent Chevalier. After hammering the lips of a priest and having his first sexual encounter with a prostitute, Chevalier contracts a case of scarlet fever. Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, along with his adulterous and over-attentive mother, After the fever leaves him with a heart murmur.