In the Canary Islands, a family shares a home. The mother Helene, cool and in charge, and her teenaged son Pierre, a pious Catholic back from boarding school, discuss his father's infidelity; the next they hear, he is dead in a car crash. Helene launches into a wild series of parties, gradually involving her son in her drugging, drinking and sex-fuelled nights out. When she mysteriously goes away, her son is left in the care of her mistress Rea and Hansi, an icy blonde sadist with whom he falls in love. This is a period of initiation for the young man until his mother can return and fully bring him to sexual maturity and adulthood.