Maria a cleaning lady, who is reserved, shy and clumsy. When she is assigned to the School of Fine Arts, she meets Hubert, the school's whimsical guardian. There she discovers a fascinating place where freedom, creativity and daring reign.
Seventeenth century. Set in a small village, nestled between the sea and the mountain, the father of Alan, a young fifteen-year-old boy, has sold himself for two years to indentured service. Alan is forced to take the place of his father and struggles to support his family.
Teacher in the most prestigious highschool in the country, François enjoys the life he’s always known, in the intellectual and bourgeois society of Paris. Trapped in a situation where he’s forced to accept a job in a school of a tough underprivileged suburb, he finds himself confronted to his own limits and to the upheaval of his values and certainties.
Philippe Mars wants to please everyone. He wants to be a good father, a friendly ex-husband, a helpful colleague and an understanding brother. Unfortunately, his little world goes out of its planned orbit. His son becomes a hardcore vegetarian, his daughter a compulsive swot, whilst his sister exhibits giant paintings of their naked parents. At the office he must face the rampages of his mentally unstable colleague Jerôme who one night turns up at his door with a young woman in tow who has just been released from a clinic.
