Johnny Fortune (Damon Lowry) is no good to anyone, not mean, but just no good. Surrounded by violence and dishonesty, Johnny lives with Kate. Johnny messes up, he loses a lot of money, his girlfriend Kate's money. Alone, desperate and on the run from a couple of hit-men, he applies for a job as an entertainer's assistant becoming a dancing bear. Unwittingly learning of secrets around him, his past catches up with him.

England, mid-1980s: Bill embarks on a dream-like odyssey around rural England, breaking into country houses, taking photos of anything that interests him, until he meets a mysterious woman in a van, who seems to be on the run from the authorities.

In 1983, little João Amaral Severo asks his father to go to the circus. His father, and army captain who had been recently widowed, refuses to take him under the pretext that the circus would draw his attention away from his studies. Ten years later João is a student in the Military College, and is tired of the harsh discipline imposed by his father and decides to join a travelling circus that stops in his hometown, Alcochete. From then on João, alone and free to live his life the way he wants, finds a world of magic, the love of Dolores (a young trapeze artist) and the family he never really had. Until a twist of fate turns João into a father...

Franny (Amanda Plummer), an absent-minded American girl, is in Lisbon to deliver an important package. Unfortunately she has lost the address and only knows that the recipient's name is João. When she meets an old prostitute, Esmeralda, the two join forces and begin cruising the town at night, across the streets and the local bars, meeting Lisbon's unconventional night fauna, to try to find João.