The story takes place in 1980. A few months ago, Richard, a civil servant, signed Charter 77, by mistake (when drunk), rather than out of conviction. Since then, he's been bedeviled by bad luck. And today is the limit. In the afternoon, he has an appointment with the dentist to have his eighths extracted, a dreadful prospect but small matter comparing with awaiting him before that: at work a financial statement, a colleague eager for marriage who hasn't grasped that their "affair" was a mere flirt, an ultimatum from his boss for Richard to retract his signature of the Charter, at home a burst stand-pipe with an old rusty gun hidden in it, unexpected paternity of his fifteen-year-old son who asks him to play the father, and on top of all, the omnipresent shadow of the secret policeman spying on him. In short - a day when he can either lose everything or at last finding his own self.