Twenty-five years after leaving school, a group of former students decide to organise a reunion. But, contrary to expectations, these "old boys" realise that time has accentuated their differences. The atmosphere is tense, the conversation taut and the old grudges resurface in no time.
During one winter night, a Portuguese teenager, Alvaro, loses his life in a fight between a youth gang and the cops in a suburb of Paris. Cidalia, a 36 year old cleaning woman, his mother, decides to defy the code of silence of the Portuguese community and tries to find the truth. She losses her friends, her job and her family but gains a life.
Set in the Lisbon during the festivities of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lovers and the old town. The story is about Cato, a nationalist politician who is charismatic and unscrupulous. He obsessively pursues Silvia, a mystical and mysterious young transvestite whom he meets at the festival. When Silvia runs into Vicente, a policeman who arrests transvestites and threatens them, Silvia must look towards blackmail to save herself. Compromising photos of Cato start to emerge among opposition parties and he must do all in his power to save his political career.
In 1983, little João Amaral Severo asks his father to go to the circus. His father, and army captain who had been recently widowed, refuses to take him under the pretext that the circus would draw his attention away from his studies. Ten years later João is a student in the Military College, and is tired of the harsh discipline imposed by his father and decides to join a travelling circus that stops in his hometown, Alcochete. From then on João, alone and free to live his life the way he wants, finds a world of magic, the love of Dolores (a young trapeze artist) and the family he never really had. Until a twist of fate turns João into a father...
Rui Sequeira, a former fighter in the Colonial War, resident of a small village of Alentejo, celebrates another anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in the company of his wife and her daughter, the young Sara, with which he has a not so good relationship. On the night of the celebrations, the death of a friend forever alters his live, waking up a whole past long dormant.
The film is set in Lisbon, and tells the story of a day in the life of Rita and Paulo, a Portuguese young couple of the 90's. The fast changing city around them makes them wish to break with all traditions and live the day the get married (only civil marriage) like it is an ordinary day.
In a unique approach to what amounts to four pseudo-morality plays, director Monique Rutler has a street entertainer with hand puppets summarize the characters and idea of each story. The first sketch is about a young man who shines shoes for a living, and tries to keep up a relationship with two women while convincing each she is his only true love. The next story is about a man who beats up his wife when he is drunk, and sells furs for a living. One day, as she is riding in the back of his truck with the furs, he hits a bad patch and she and some furs fall out. The question is, will the woman be enterprising and leave the jerk - or not? The third tale concerns a woman looking into how much control a prostitute has over her clients, and to really find out, she becomes a prostitute herself for awhile - leading to some quite unexpected situations. The last segment handles the uglier side of the life styles of the rich and famous.