What there is of a plot in this drama serves mainly as a vehicle for the exploration of character. In the story, Michel (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) is a recent widower. As the story opens, he and his friend Andre (Philippe Nahon) are sharing a drink on Christmas Eve. He takes a yellow scarf from a woman he knows (Laura Morante) and teasingly refuses to return it. Throughout the remainder of the film, the scarf reappears, as does the woman, until they wind up in bed together at the end of the film. Before that happens, Michel wanders around Paris, viewing the festivities with a jaundiced eye which serves to heighten the unattractiveness of those he observes. Later he has dinner with a group at Andre's house, and his poor opinion of human nature is amply supported by the events that occur then.
In a building on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris lives ten-year-old Roger, who is surrounded by women - his great-grandmother, his grandmother, and his mother Nicole. Living in an exclusively feminine environment, the boy wishes more than anything else to have a masculine presence around. His dream comes true when he meets Jacques, who's madly in love with Nicole and who is about to completely turn the boy's life upside down.
Marie is nineteen and bored in her little suburban life with no future. In a café, she meets the charismatic and beautiful Gerard. Blinded by adoration, Mary decides to leave her parents and her clerk job to live with the man she considers as the love of her life. But Gerard is a pimp, who soon forces her into prostitution. From within homes to out on the streets, the young woman gradually discovers a world of decay and violence.
Paul's mother
Eric, a 14-year-old boy, is now almost alone. His mother, faced with her husband's bizarre behavior, left the marital home. Eric's father, for his part, leads a triple existence. On the other hand, he maintains apparently normal relations with his son, but at the same time he leads an unacknowledged, secret life "elsewhere", where confused, equivocal relations bind him to a strange, elusive woman, whose vision sometimes inspires feelings of filial love, sometimes reveals to him the bitter taste of a passion faded by time.
A crackdown on drugs leads a burned out cop to take the law into his own hands and seek revenge against villainous drug dealers. Word comes down from above that the United States feels French authorities have been lax on their arrests of the dealers. A violent action feature finds the harried inspector battling his colleagues as much as the criminal element targeted for extermination.
Nelly Pointard
Veterinary surgeon William Chaminade is having a peaceful holiday in the South of France when he is witness to an event that will change not only his life but the destiny of France! A young woman tries to kill herself by jumping from the upstairs window of the hotel where he is staying. Thanks to the services of a passing athlete, the woman is unharmed, and she reveals that her distress is down to her husband’s apparent lack of interest in her. Immediately, Chaminade has a brainwave. He will open a special centre for people like this unfortunate young woman, who will be able to satisfy their romantic needs, at the tax payers’ expense. All is well until this innovative ’pleasure centre’ draws the attention of an over-zealous tax inspector, Dupuis...
Martine
Base on Paul Féval's "Le Bossu" ("The Hunchback")
