Nicolas Mallet, an inconspicuous and shy bank employee, one day successfully invites Marie-Paul, a young woman he hadn’t known before, in the streets of Paris to a café and sleeps with her the next day. When he tells his surprised friend Claude about the incident, the disillusioned and handicapped writer starts to guide him, leading Nicolas on a dazzling social ascent.

Juliette Vidal is a journalist in Paris who works for the glamorous magazine "Pénélope". Uninspired, she decides to take an interest in the life of a department store saleswoman Juliette Rozenec.

Paul leaves his wealthy parents behind to go on a spiritual quest. He meets up with a pilgrim, leader of a vegetarian cult whose members survive by begging for food in uncomfortable robes. The religious fanatics draw the ire of local peasants when they are arrested for stealing eggs. Marianne is one of the followers, and she and Paul go to a remote island to live off seaweed and vegetation, but a development company moves in to wreck the paradise. Paul is brokenhearted when Mariane goes off with one of the greedy developers in this symbolic film that decries the allure of the material world.

Commercial director Serge Faberge is having an affair with Evelyne, the 18 year old fiancee of friend Hugh. His own pregnant wife Francoise usually does not mind his dalliances, until he actually walks out on her and their newborn baby to move in with Evelyne. The shoe is on the other foot when dashing stuntman Dado catches Evelyne's eye in Venice.

A family's life is transformed into an object of art.