François (Gaël Morel), a shy young man from the lower middle class, is working towards his high school diploma.

He spends most of his time talking about movies and literature with his best friend, Maïté (Élodie Bouchez), whose mother Mme Alvarez (Michèle Moretti) is François's French teacher.

He is obsessed with events in Algeria and supports the OAS, which opposes Algerian independence and defends the rights of French settlers there.

Each member of the quartet develops in the course of the film, shifting repeatedly from stubborn positions to more flexible appreciations of their circumstances, explained in French class by a reading of "The Oak and the Reed", one of La Fontaine's Fables.

The project was first conceived as part of a television film series dealing with adolescence, Tous les garçons et les filles de leurs âges, entitled Le chêne et le roseau (The Oak and the Reed), which made up the first 55 minutes of Wild Reeds.

[7] At the 1995 César Awards, Les Roseaux Sauvages won Best Film, Best Director (André Téchiné), Most Promising Young Actress (Élodie Bouchez) and Best Original Screenplay.