Pierre, a professional dancer, suffers from a serious heart disease. While he is waiting for a transplant which may (or may not) save his life, he has nothing better to do than look at the people around him, from the balcony of his Paris apartment.
In southern France, a Franco-Arabic shipyard worker along with his partner's daughter pursues his dream of opening a restaurant.
Told in four vignettes, this existential comedy relates the exploits of four aspiring criminals who hope to improve their lot, but find that they might not have what it takes for a life of crime.
Insurance executive Charles suspects his wife Hélène of playing the field, so he has a private detective locate his wife's lover, author Victor Pegala.
During World War II, two French civilians and a downed British Bomber Crew set out from Paris to cross the demarcation line between Nazi-occupied Northern France and the South. From there they will be able to escape to England. First, they must avoid German troops – and the consequences of their own blunders.
After the war, in Bucharest, a young Romanian poet arrested for having written an article denouncing Stalinist crimes, will save his life by accepting to become a hostage of the regime.
A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.
Lyons, France. Michel Descombes is a watchmaker who lives alone with his teenage son Bernard. When the police visit and informs him that Bernard killed a man and is on the run with a girl, Michel realizes that he knew far less about his son than he thought.
Two couple of friends, one very rich, the other almost homeless, decide to go on Holiday. Julie, a single mother, joins them too. Once at seaside, it starts a complicate love cross among them that will involve also a transsexual, a jealous brother, a Latin Lover and another nervous stressed couple. Not to mention about the daughter of one of them that is secretly in Chicago with one of her father's employees... At the end of the summer, all of them will join the same party...
A tale of a philosophical womanizer who is forced to question his seemingly carefree existence.