A young couple who are amateur roller-skating buffs practice their chosen avocation at a Parisian roller rink. Their hopes rise with a chance to go to Chicago to compete, especially when a magazine reporter assures them that his company will back them -- but then lets them know some sex-related business is a part of the package. Caught up in the couple's drama are several other characters who look like they might need some help themselves, making the problem of how to get to the Windy City seem more and more insoluble.

Sandra, a schoolteacher, would like to control every moment of a life she finds too banal. Even if she seems to have found an ideal in love, she takes two lovers, in the person of Pierre, ordinary but in love, and of Blaise a splendid black photographer.