In the middle of the night, someone brings Ivan's body home to his wife and his young son. Flashbacks reveal the relationships among Ivan and his brother Alex, a cop with a cleanliness fetish; siblings Juliette and Jimmy, Ivan's partners in a seedy nightclub; the love triangle of Alex, Juliette, and Marie, a professor of philosophy; and of Alex and his nephew, Ivan's dour, stoic son. Ivan's death changes every relationship.

Sylvie is a hooker whose illegitimate daughter commits a crime. She and her daughter flee to find Sylvie's first love in the countryside. The daughter is trying to get to know her unwilling mother. Along the way, the two meet a male fugitive and bond with each other.

When she lands up in the middle of nowhere, Séréna, a rather thoughtless young woman, is supposed to marry Hubert, a country squire she came into contact with through the classifieds in "Le Chasseur Français", a magazine for hunters. But she gets to know Roland, a bachelor farmer who develops an instant burning passion for her. Prepared to do anything for her, he goes as far as to holdup banks to secure the good life she longs for. Although she confesses (wrongly) that she suffers from AIDS, he is in no way discouraged. Séréna accepts to marry Roland but on her wedding night she balks at taking the "midnight exam". She runs away and meets Antoine, a married writer, who hides her in the attic of his house, without his wife knowing it.

The central role of Louise is portrayed by Elodie Bouchez, who won a 1998 Cannes "Best Actress" award for The Dreamlife of Angels. When Louise has an encounter with homeless Remi (Roschdy Zem), they have a magnetic attraction, but she is already attached to illiterate shoplifter and pickpocket punk Yaya (Gerald Thomassin). Although allied with Yaya in petty crimes, Louise lives with her widowed father (Lou Castel), a devoted writer of fiction. After a Metro bum (Bruce Myers) tells her of his desire to see his young son, she plucks the kid, Gaby (Antoine de Merle), right out of school, making him the newest rookie recruited into their subway gang. Shoplifting in a department store, the young toughs escape the store's security guards by hiding in the ballet rehearsal rooms of the nearby opera. But does Louise really belong with the subway toughs, or is she just pretending? When she's arrested, Louise is forced to reexamine her lifestyle.

The love story between a young man and a married woman 20 years his senior.