Misanthropic novelist François writes gripping crime stories – “Agatha Christie meets The Scarlet Pimpernel” – but outside of the swashbuckling imaginary world of his Marquis la Rose-novels, life is far from thrilling. His partner Colette, a professor at the Sorbonne and world-renowned expert on Alfred Hitchcock, is tired of watching François sit around their apartment in his pyjamas and yearns for the excitement of the classic films she watches with her students. When Colette begins to suspect their flamboyant actor neighbour of murdering his wife, the couple’s mundane lives are turned upside down – and their stale relationship is jolted back to life.

Right in the middle of a school inspector’s visit, Ari, a 27-year-old student teacher, collapses. Angry with him for being a failure, his father kicks him out of the house. Emotionally raw, and alone in the city, Ari reluctantly forces himself to rekindle his relationships with old friends. As his memories of the previous months successively ebb and flow, Ari discovers that other people aren’t doing as well as he imagined, and that perhaps he has been sleepwalking through his own life.