Bernard Ballet

La vie est bien ingrate pour François Berthier : un chien hurle toute la nuit et l'empêche de dormir, la machine a café lui explose au visage, il pleut, le chef de bureau à la banque l'humilie et le menace de renvoi. Et puis, du jour au lendemain, tout ce qui était violent ou pénible pour François se transforme comme par miracle. Que se passe-t-il ? Pourquoi le monde devient-il si brusquement doux

In the nineteenth century, Adolphe, a young man of twenty four carefree years, plans to obtain favors Ellenore, a beautiful woman of thirty years, much more vulnerable. This yields to his advances and he disclaims all. But already, Adolphe loves less. Yet the idea of ​​the pain is unbearable.

Fanfan leaves his friend Charles and thinks he can be accommodated by his friend, Joss. However, at the same time, Joss abandons the marital home. Fanfan and Joss have only to knock on the door of Manu, Fanfan's sister, who gathers them until Mytch, Manu's companion, throws everyone out. The three young women find themselves in the street and continue their run, while their lovers gang up to track them down. The mini-war of the sexes will flare up.

A worker in a bottle factory, Pierre decides to switch from day shift to night shift. In his new team, he runs into Fred, a charismatic and violent guy. Fred says loudly that Pierre is his boyfriend. In fact, he never misses an opportunity to bully or humiliate him. This could only be a bad joke. But the harassment continues in a downward spiral ...

Hippolyte, the chef at the small Paris restaurant of the title, is losing his sense of smell - and without that, you can’t cook. Not in France. The restaurant has to close. Guests and customers of the ailing master chef gather for one last fabulous meal. Between courses, personal conflicts are explored and flashbacks flesh out incidents from the lives of the restaurant owners.

Camille Prader, back from a physicians' meeting, is waiting for his suitcase on the Airport conveyor belt. Clémentine, his girlfriend of the day, has come to fetch him. With a radiant smile, she tells Fabrice that she left everything to live with him. When Camille picks a case he realizes ha has taken the wrong one. The label shows it belongs to a musician called Juliette Graveur. Hegrasps the occasion to run away from Clémentine by claiming Juliette is his mistress....

Family life in a parisian apartment during the 60's.

In the 19th century, children -- particularly the children of the poor -- were considered to be an exploitable resource of docile and cheap labor. Anyone who had the effrontery to steal so much as a portion of a loaf of bread for any reason would (at the very least) go to prison, regardless of their age. However, people of conscience were beginning to protest against this situation. The story takes place in a prison for children where conditions are particularly harsh. The warden is a thick-headed martinet who demands complete compliance with the rules, or the children will be brutally dealt with. The assistant warden is a more modern man, and is appalled by the whole institution, but seeks to begin by reforming it. To that end, he has invited a journalist to come and see the conditions that prevail there, in the hopes that she will rouse public opinion against at least this one form of injustice.

A young woman convenes with her extended family in a provincial village where her cousin, in a coma, is hospitalized after attempting suicide.

After World War II, a small French village struggles to put the war behind as the controlling Communist Party tries to flush out Petain loyalists. The local bar owner, a simple man who likes to write poetry, who only wants to be left alone to do his job, becomes a target for Communist harassment as they try and locate a particular loyalist, and he pushes back.

Sandra, a schoolteacher, would like to control every moment of a life she finds too banal. Even if she seems to have found an ideal in love, she takes two lovers, in the person of Pierre, ordinary but in love, and of Blaise a splendid black photographer.

A young couple who are amateur roller-skating buffs practice their chosen avocation at a Parisian roller rink. Their hopes rise with a chance to go to Chicago to compete, especially when a magazine reporter assures them that his company will back them -- but then lets them know some sex-related business is a part of the package. Caught up in the couple's drama are several other characters who look like they might need some help themselves, making the problem of how to get to the Windy City seem more and more insoluble.