In this political drama, five left-leaning friends gradually lose heart in the Socialist government elected in 1981 in France. One of the five men is a television broadcaster; the others are a teacher about to become an academic inspector, a tax man, the director of a cultural center, and a sociologist who is about to step into a ministerial position. Their interlocking lives are told in alternating vignettes over a four-year period, and the professions director Jacques Fansten has chosen for his main characters seem to be a comment on the media, education, budget or finance, the arts, and government bureaucracy under Socialist rule.