After doing some time in jail, René has finally said goodbye to his criminal past. But when his son is mortally ill and in desperate need of expensive medical help, René can't refuse the offer to crack a safe in a villa. What René and his pals don't know is that they serve as a decoy for criminals who have much bigger plans. Can he escape from the police?

The movie starts with an interview with director Claude Lelouch. He pleads viewers not to disclose the plot of the movie after leaving the projection room. Even the movie's trailer shows only a long sequence of faces gazing speechlessly in space. "Like all my movies, this one is about a man and a woman", says Lelouch in the interview.

Louis is a delivery boy, his wife Chantal is a supermarket salesgirl. Louis is bored, and decides to buy a truck and go to the Lebanon, but he has no money. He tries to rob the supermarket where Chantal works, but it goes wrong and he kills the cashier and watchman...

The time is the 1930s and two Soviet spies (both Frenchmen by nationality) have been helping Communist factions during the Civil War in Spain. It is the time of Stalin's iron rule in the USSR, and the two agents are suddenly called to Moscow by the KGB. Knowing that they are in trouble for no fault of their own, fear drives one of them to suicide while the other gets his lover and her child and begins a run for his life, knowing that the KGB will never let him go free.

Martinaud, an illustrious notary suspected of being the perpetrator of two horrendous crimes, voluntarily agrees to be questioned by Inspector Gallien on New Year's Eve. What initially is a routine procedure, soon becomes a harsh interrogation that seems to confirm the initial suspicions.

"Cocktail Molotov" is the story of the adventures of this threesome, who reach Venice only to learn of the outbreak of the May 1968 disturbances at home. Once again, Anne, Frederic and Bruno realize that the important things of their time are happening somewhere where they are not. Swindled out of their car and virtually broke, they hitchhike back to Paris, hoping to arrive in time for some of the excitement.

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.