A Senegalese platoon of soldiers from the French Free Army are returned from combat in France and held for a temporary time in a military encampment with barbed wire fences and guard towers in the desert. Among their numbers are Sergeant Diatta, the charismatic leader of the troop who was educated in Paris and has a French wife and child, and Pays, a Senegalese soldier left in a state of shock from the war and concentration camps and who can only speak in guttural screams and grunts.

During her holiday in Brest, a young Parisian falls in love with a sailor. But autumn comes and the two lovers have to part. They write to each other. Will their love resist at a distance, each living his life, him in Brest with his friends, she in Paris who keeps waiting for him? An impossible love story and the cross-portrait of two cities, Paris and Brest, between the realism of the color images and the poetry infused by the sepia black and white images, lives to the rhythm of the nostalgia of the two lovers...

1944 : Occupied France. Juliette (Vice) is Wehrmacht General Bamberg's mistress and enjoys a privileged life. Her younger sister Justine (Virtue) is about to marry Jean who is in the Resistance and come to Juliette for help. Both sisters end up at "la Commanderie", where Juliette becomes SS Colonel Schonberg's mistress and Justine is detained with other pretty girls who must satisfy the sexual needs of high-ranking nazi officials. Inspired by "Justine ou les infortunes de la vertu" by the marquis de Sade