Giovanni, seventeen going on eighteen, has a small scar on his left cheekbone and his nails are always dirty. His father dead, his mother in a nursing home, living with a borderline personality disorder, he has been entrusted to social services. He is taken care of by the local priest and the social worker in a small village in northern Italy. But his aggressive nature often gets him into trouble. With a primal need for liberation and destruction, he sees everyone as a ball to hit and fling away.
When Giovanni shows the desire to take the sacrament of confirmation, his caretakers are overjoyed. But they soon discover that it is all a lie: Giovanni is only using the holy sacrament to clean up his image in the eyes of the juvenile judge...