In the aftermath of the April 1974 revolution, 16-year-old Afonso returns to his home town of Lisbon to live with his artist mother Noémia, having spent his childhood in Macau. Disapproving of the Estado Novo dictatorship, his father, a naval officer, is on a tour of duty there. When Afonso was 14, Noémia fell in love with an English journalist in Hong Kong and went to live with him in London, with Heitor’s consent. Heitor, a left-wing man living in a conservative Portuguese colony, was harshly criticised for complying with his wife’s request in a time when divorce was outlawed. But Heitor has a group of loyal friends and hosts regime opposition meetings at his house, hidden from prying eyes. 

The winds of freedom of the 25th of April arrive late in far Macau, due to communication difficulties and the time difference. They are celebrated on the following day, April 26th, Afonso’s 15th birthday. Heitor and his comrades meet again at his house to celebrate the Carnation Revolution and the end of the dictatorship, thinking everything was about to change in Portugal and Macau. Amid the festive atmosphere, the progressive Father Pereira says euphorically to a surprised Afonso: “From now on, your birthday will be on the first day of full freedom!”

In Lisbon, things are very different to life in peaceful Macau, caught between Communist China and cosmopolitan Hong Kong. In a capital waking up to politics after 48 years of dictatorship, Afonso awakens to unforeseen affections and different loves. Noémia introduces him to Chris, her journalist boyfriend, who rushed to Portugal with her to cover the social and political situation. From the first moment, Afonso feels a strange physical attraction towards Chris that will blossom into a fantasy affair through their shared passion for books.

Heitor returns to Lisbon when his tour of duty in Macau is interrupted by politics. His thinking becomes radicalised. He defends values he used to condemn and condemns attitudes that he’d always defended. Disenchanted and pessimistic about the direction in which the country is headed after the revolution, he becomes rigid and overly critical, specifically about Chris and Noémia’s relationship. He feels her drifting further apart after their divorce, once the new legislation is passed.

Afonso is an introvert, a boy who never smiles. He experiences an agitated adolescence in a city gripped by the revolution, a Lisbon he gradually discovers while discovering himself. The sexual orientation of the men around him seems ambiguous to him, and his desire leads him to a clandestine gay community, no less persecuted with the collusion of democracy than under fascism before it.

Chris’s ambivalent attitude confuses him and Afonso falls in love with him; this goes unnoticed by Noémia, busy with her work. The sexual tension Afonso imagines between Chris and himself leads Afonso to take risks, so that his step-father can be his first lover and he can start living his freedom to the full.