Antoine lives with his father Gaston. The latter is a voyeur and keeps his son at home through emotional blackmail. Gaston is forced to make a financial agreement with the neighbor across the street, Goran, in order to be able to continue watching Dune, his girlfriend. Antoine meets her and runs away with her.

La Première éducation sentimentale (the first version of L'Éducation sentimentale), re-adapting the themes of first love, the intoxication of desire, and failed ideological revolution (that culminated in the Revolution of 1848) to the May 68 generation through a chronicle of the parallel lives of a pair of childhood friends, the pragmatic Henri and idealistic Jules as they leave their bucolic, rural hometown to separately pursue their baccalaureate - and real world - educations.