In Passy, ​​Paris, 1895. The young widow Hélène calls the doctor Henri Deberle during the night, when her daughter Jeanne suddenly gets breathless. Together they spend the night at the bedside, and it develops from a trusting encounter a love relationship. When the doctor Hélène one day confesses his love, the daughter comes from jealousy in another, life-threatening crisis. A film adaptation of the eponymous novel by Émile Zola, which addresses the social milieu of the bourgeois family in the "Second Empire".

A threesome becomes a foursome in this sensitive drama. The tale begins with the relationship between a recently divorced man and woman (from different marriages) and the bisexual they get involved with. At first all three are happy in their new arrangement, but then the divorced fellow suddenly leaves and those remaining in the relationship become quite tense. Fortunately the fellow returns with another, more conventional fellow. Eventually the three persuade him to join them.

Marie, a young provincial girl, is seduced by an American billionaire. She agrees to stay with him if he moves her village to New York.