Alice, having trouble with her self image, tries to hide her weight and eating disorder from her school and parents.
Secrétaire patron
Two young men have left their obscure Balkan country to earn some money as "guest workers" in western Europe. On their way back home, they attempt to change trains in Paris but encounter surprising difficulties from the ticket authorities there. It seems that political changes have rendered their homeland nonexistent, and their passports are no good. Before long, they are stranded in Paris without passports, without a country, and soon even their luggage is stolen. Their fumbling efforts to straighten out the mess result in the French press getting into the act, labeling them as Russian spies. The Parisian expatriate community takes them into its bosom, and romance blooms between one of the lads and a Spanish hatmaker, before they finally achieve a (highly improbable) solution for their difficulties.
The film records a day in a supermarket in the Brussels region. The story of this day's little events, both comic and touching, provides the general framework of the film. The situations which are conveyed through an accumulation of quick, light touches, highlight some of the ways we behave in connection with food, the repetitive element in our gestures and movements in this everyday, enclosed world which is so familiar. The film is based on the observation of a supermarket and the people who shop or work there. More and more of their various personalities emerge in the course of the day. They all have their importance: we get to know them from the outside, like people in a group photo where each has his own place. All these individuals cross each other's paths, meet each other, bump into each other again and fill in the framework of the film with a many-sided tableau.
