Gianluca, just back from military service and his mother, Angela, a pensioner are suddenly evicted from the middle class apartment they have always lived in. They are assigned a council house but this has already been taken over by a group of Arab squatters. Gianluca begins a desperate search for a job, any job, and asks his friends from high school for help. They are a varied bunch; one is a patient in a clinic, another has become a New Ages disciple, another has a fatal road accident and a fourth is a property speculator. Mother and son end up in a little hut by the sea in the decaying suburbs of Ostia in the midst of a variegated group of humanity living on their wits. Angela starts talking to the cactus plants and Gianluca, who once dreamed of becoming a ranger like his friend, Andrea, has an infinite series of precarious jobs where the line of demarcation that divides legality from crime is ever thinner.