With her unrestrainable joy of living, Alessandra Albani (GIANNA MARIA GARBELLI) leaves the jail of Opera, located in the suburbs of Milan, where she was served a seven-year sentence for drug traffic. Her detention is not over yet; benefiting from the "Gozzini" law, Alessandra can now spend the remaining three years under semicustody. Among the many rules she has to keep to during her new phase of detention, one entails her coming back by 10 p.m. to the Milan prison of San Vittore, where she has to spend her nights.

Alessandra's extroverted personality and strong self-confidence lead her to believe she will soon be able to hold the reins of her life. Her first day out of prison is the happiest moment her life; unable to hold back her enthusiasm, she is overwhelmed by joy at the idea of being able to walk in the streets, to meet people who know nothing about her and to start again from scratch. Her joy, though, will end soon. After a brief period of time, Ales is forced to confront mistrust, hard-feelings, abandoning, bitter disappointments. Temptations. Roberto, (DARIO D'AMBROSI) her brother and party to her crimes, does not forgive her for the years spent in jail. A friend of hers Massimo, (JOE KLOENNE) ditches her cravenly.

After having welcomed her with great cordiality, the people she works with start to show hostility to her. Antonio (PAOLO D'AGOSTINO), a drug dealer who is benefiting from semicustody like Alessandra, tries to drag her back in her old way of life. The only person the girl can trust, is her mother, Laura (ANNIE GIRARDOT), a lonely, strong woman who devotes her life to mending her family, broken up by the sons' mixing up in drug trafficking. Lost in the hell of noises of the convulsive metropolis of Milan, Ales clings to Federico's (MAURIZIO DONADONI) love.

But the young man, who seems to her a blessing from heaven, vanishes in the night, scared by her truth. Marina (FIORENZA MARCHEGGIANI), Ale' s cell-mate, a former terrorist, does not forgive her for the strong though momentary intimacy that had united them during a particularly euphoric night. Marina is therefore plotting to take a revenge on Ale, together with an old acquaintance of hers, Francis (STEPHANE FERRARA), a second-hand dealer who is in fact a trafficker in arms, whom she has met during the dramatic times of terrorism. If Marina's revenge is carried into effect, Alessandra will run the risk of being sent back to jail for many years.

Every door seems to shut before her. Tired of living with the nightmare of being in late, exasperated by the lies she has to tell in order to be accepted and by the temptation to get back to the world of drug dealing, embittered and disillusioned, she almost decides to take flight, to send everything to hell...Will Alessandra be able not to break down and not to be trapped by Marina's snare by definitely cutting every link with her past? Will she accept to get on living half of her time inside a prison while looking at her future with more disenchanted eyes and being confident in her ability to build a new life?

The movie was filmed in the places where the actual events took place, under kind of permission of the MINISTRY OF JUSTICE OF ITALY, of Mr. Luigi Pagano, director of the district penitentiary of San Vittore in Milan and of Mr. Aldo Fabozzi, director of the Opera house of detention. COPYRIGHT (C)1997 all rights reserved GIANNA MARIA GARBELLI