A middle aged married woman suffers from depression. Her husband suggests she get a dog, but instead she gets a job. Treatment of the women workers leads her into a hilarious fantasy in which roles are reversed and bearded men sit behind typewriters worrying about their looks and what to buy for dinner. She gets involved in a strike and loses her job, but has found some friends and a more positive attitude to life.

From a working class coming-of-age novel, Morten Arnfred fashioned his feature film to recapture the feel, the sting, the pain, but also the spirit of solidarity of the 1950s in the metropolitan city of Copenhagen: at the center, young Johnny, helpless, hapless, happy, unhappy, going through the motions of growing up. Bodil awards: Best Film and Best Actor (Allan Olsen).

Steffen is a good kid, a teenager who has recently finished school and is looking for work. He lives with his widowed mother, a newspaper reporter. Very little throws him off his stride, whether it is his girlfriend's jealousy of his friendship with Charly, a reform-school boy, or his mother's drunken, playful amorousness one night, because he reminds her of his father.