The film opens in Budapest in November 5, 1956, during the Hungarian uprising. The counter-revolutionist Pista leaves his wife Eva and two boys for Vienna, in a Red Cross truck disguised as a causality, rather than face prison, after they refuse to accompany him. These scenes are shot in a documentary style, with actual newsreel footage. The film then picks up in November 5, 1963, and the high school boys, Dini (Istvan Znamenak) and the elder Gábor (Henrik Pauer), are living with the traumas of the past and the pangs felt by their hard-working single mom. It’s now a post-Stalinist liberalization period and we witness the smoky bubbling atmosphere of the boys’ high school, eerily filmed by Lajos Koltai. In this gruesome setting, Gothár frames his cautionary story about the animosity building between the old-guard teachers and the seething students spurred on by listening to Elvis, drinking Coca-Cola, dreaming of the fruits of capitalism and living for the ongoing sexual revolution.

It’s seen through the eyes of the downbeat Dini, who has the hots for coed Magda (Anikó Iván). She’s a sweetie, the daughter of a dentist, who tempts him with her flirtatious ways. They secretly meet during dancing class. At home, Lajos Öze, a comrade of the boys’ father, gets out of prison and moves in with their mom. Hewarns Dini not to make waves: in class he should not raise his hand and never contribute unless asked, assuming all those asking questions are only trying to pump him for information because they are being pumped. The teen-agers hang around in cliques, act rowdy and peddle porno photos. When caught with such photos, Dini’s old-guard biology teacher (Jozef Kroner) lectures him that’s a shame how these photos debase women. Dini bites at this rebuff that sex is sacred and thereby loses Magda to his sexually liberated brother.