The intelligent Linda, daughter of Joseph and Jane, takes a critical view of her parents' marriage. Her father's dominant behavior and her mother's indifference become so unbearable to her that she decides to run away. She manages to persuade Jane to accompany her.
The film is inspired by the Mário de Sá-Carneiro short story, where the narration is made by Professor Antena's assistant who walks by his side when he is run over in a perhaps enigmatic way.
The story, told partly in flashback to 1968, concerns a clique of English public schoolboys who bully and humiliate an unpopular younger pupil (Cox) who is 'bad at games'.
When a dedicated jockey finds that the local politicians are not to be trusted and begins to feel his romance with a beautiful woman slowly slipping away, his last-ditch effort to risk it all for his trusted horse Palomo shows that sometimes animals are truly man's best friend.