The left-wing and right-wing lifestyles, as seen through the eyes of a thirteen year-old girl who has just moved to the Italian capital from a small town an hour's train ride away, face off in "Caterina va in città". The music-loving Caterina is dominated by her frustrated and unhappy father, who believes he deserves more from the world. He is the classic high school accounting teacher with his own novel in a desk drawer and who, to break out from his anonymity, hopes a famous TV host will give him his break. Since whether this help comes from the left or the right does not matter to him, he hopes that his little girl may be able to come to his aid. Her high school features students from illustrious families, and perhaps Caterina could become friend with one of them. Indeed, the naive and honest Caterina becomes friend with each of the heads of her class's two main cliques: the brooding leader of the alternatives, her mother a writer and her father, a famous intellectual; and the right-wing leader, a wild and lively girl whose father is one of the chief parliamentarians of one of the leading right-wing party. The former takes Caterina into a world of poetry and tattoos, homes filled with books and paintings, arguments and herbal teas; the other introduces her to a parallel universe of parties, soccer stars, boyfriends and exclusive clubs. Besides their parents' "tribes" there, of course, are more adolescent gangs, too. Caterina's class is broken in two divided between one group formed by goths, alternatives and hippies and the other "party" made up of rich kids, preppies and so forth, all with a political component that satirically yet accurately reproduces the adult world of modern-day society.