Eager to impress pretty Maryne (Maryne Cayon), Aziz (Aziz El Hadachi) takes her and friend Jo (Joseph-Marie Ebrard) to one of the vacation villas that he and his father Hassad (Hassane El Idrissi) look after in the off-season (as an extension of the construction work they do for local builder Bati [Michel Ferracci, STATE AFFAIRS], the nephew of a local gangster). They are soon joined by uninvited guests: Maryne's boyfriend Hamza (Hamza Meziani), his friend François-Jo (François-Joseph Cullioli), and his girlfriend Pascale (Andréa Brusque). Things quickly get out of hand when the party-crashers explore the house and make a mess. Aziz gets upset, but to save face in front of Maryne, he steals a hi-fi set and some DVDs. Aziz tries to return them the next day and clean up only to discover that the owners have returned. Since the owners are friends of Bati, he knows just who to ask about the breaking and entering. Aziz tries to make amends to Bati and his own father by returning the items only to discover that his "guests" have also made off with a pair of engraved Moroccan rifles. Aziz tries to contact François-Jo, Hamza, and Joe about rifles, but they have already been scared by a frightened Hamza's report that Bati is threatening an "Arab massacre" that is otherwise unlikely to touch "right side of the tracks" Jo and François-Jo unless Aziz rats them out (and they are now armed with the tools to make sure that doesn't happen).

Contrary to its advertising, APACHES is a slight and deliberately-paced drama that only hints at being a thriller while shedding light on the racial and class tensions beneath the sun-drenched surface of the resort island of Corsica. Questions of identity and what the young characters will do in order to belong drive the action rather than tense encounters with Bati's men, and those questions continue to linger as the characters take action. Aziz knows what kind of man Bati's uncle is, and that he recommended them for the villa grounds keeping job. While he had intended to clean things up and return the stolen property with none the wiser, his decision not to rat out his supposed friends bewilders when his mortality is threatened. François-Jo despises both the Arabs and the the French, and is hard-pressed to identity himself either way, possibly explaining why he has no compunction about robbing the villa's owners and screwing over Aziz. Aziz's cousin Hamza seems to be the voice of conscience among the tighter-knit trio of himself, Jo, and François-Jo; yet he seems even more desperate to belong, taking (or being manipulated into) decisive action and later trying to completely change or conceal his identity (after having earlier called out François-Jo on his self-loathing views). The overweight (and white) Joe is the most weakest-willed of the four, but also possibly the most rational in his reluctance (or cowardice) to get any deeper in an already dire situation. The ending is equal parts ambiguous, cynical, ironic, and thought-provoking as the camera lingers at length on careless, dancing, sun-tanned bodies and one character who has never felt like more of an outcast.