Despite her best intentions and hard work, a single mom with two sons just can't make ends meet and is forced to depend upon credit just to get by. Desperate, she can see only one solution left to save her family: stage a hold-up.
Sandra, a young woman forced to leave the south of France to flee a violent husband. Without attachment, she returned to Boulogne-sur-Mer, the city of her childhood which she left almost 15 years ago. She finds her mother there and a world she left behind. Without money, she is hired in a fish cannery where she befriends two workers. But one day, one of her colleagues tackles her insistently, she defends herself and kills him accidentally.