In an impoverished district of Marseille, full of tower blocks populated by people from many parts of Africa and elsewhere, Victorine is growing up with an inadequate mother and an alcoholic father, who keeps giving her half-brothers and half-sisters. She loves him nonetheless, wishing that he would give up drinking and stay home. Well aware of what puberty entails, she is being serially initiated in an abandoned car by a gang of unemployed youths when she cries out that the first time should have some affection and romance. In which case, they say, you need Petit Paul. Treating her tenderly, he becomes her first love but his career as a burglar is cut short when he is shot by an enraged householder. After exposing herself to a solitary man on a train, he declares that he has fallen in love with her. This is Maurice, whose love never wavers and who marries her.
