Joy is an emotionally damaged young woman of eighteen, who was given up at birth, to grow up in homes and with foster families. She lives on the fringes of society, getting by on benefits and earning a little extra by playing the accordion in the subway. In addition, she is a skilled shoplifter and has never been caught. The film follows her closely during her dogged search for her unknown biological mother. Joy has a rather distant quality and the only times we see her animated is during her obsessive attempts to discover the identity and address of her mother. She clings to her conviction that she was the product of a loving relationship and that is why her mother called her Joy. This belief is all she has to hang onto in life. Her other activities revolve around her friend, Denise (16), who has got pregnant on purpose and is living in the home from which Joy was expelled because of bad behaviour, and her boyfriend Momo (21), a second-generation immigrant who was born and bred in Holland. Joy's search for her biological mother, have led her to an old address; on the basis of a vague physical resemblance, she assumes that the woman she finds there is her mother. She starts to follow the woman on her way to work and during shopping trips, and watches the house where she lives with her teenage daughter. Joy becomes more cheerful and more alert, and begins to develop an eye for the world around her - giving us a glimpse of the young woman she could have become if she had had a bit more luck. Then she hears someone call the woman by her name - a different name from that of her biological mother. She is profoundly shocked: her world seems to collapse around her.