Paris, 1933. The daughter of a respectable lower middle class couple, Violette Nozière, leads a disreputable double life. Far from being the innocent 18-year-old her parents mistake her for, she spends her nights with dissolute young men in the less salubrious areas of the city.

Nikola’s children are taken away from him after social services decide that he is too poor to provide them with a decent living environment. He sets off on foot to lodge a complaint in Belgrade.

In 1980s Italy, a relationship begins between seventeen-year-old teenage Elio and the older adult man hired as his father's research assistant.