A bank clerk is given an unusual retirement gift, a high class call girl. Unaware that he has been 'set up' by colleagues the man goes with the girl to Venice where he enjoys his new found virility.

Walter Klozett is a spy arrested and imprisoned by the French Police who know him in possession of stolen booty which the French secret services would like to recover at all costs.

In France in the near future, revolt and chaos erupt. A right-wing politician, Philippe Muphand, is set to take control when his lady friend Caroline walks out, announcing she will take up with the first fool she sees. The fool is Serge Laine, a professor and author of the prize-winning "Le voyage qui ne finit pas," headed to the train station for tickets to Barcelona where he and his wife will enjoy a second honeymoon and he will lecture at the university. Caroline seduces Serge, and he soon abandons wife, family, job, and honesty to embrace Caroline, the romanticism of Jack London, and murder.

A bored wife leaves her husband for an unemployed, petty criminal.

Daniel lives with his grandmother and, after a year of high school, goes to live with his mother in the south of France; a harsher environment which rapidly changes his perception of friends, work, and women.

Three friends face mid-life crises. Paul is a writer who's blocked. François has lost his ideals and practices medicine for the money; his wife grows distant, even hostile. The charming Vincent, everyone's favorite, faces bankruptcy, his mistress leaves him, and his wife, from whom he's separated, wants a divorce. The strains on the men begin to show particularly in François and Paul's friendship and in Vincent's health. A younger man, Jack, becomes attractive to Lucie, François's wife. Another young friend, the boxer Jean, who's like a son to Vincent and whose girlfriend is pregnant, has taken a bout with a merciless slugger. Has happiness eluded this circle of friends?

During World War One, in a small rural French village far away from the front, a gamekeeper and his wife take in children displaced by the war.

Bienaimé, a modest postman, in love with Janine, the village postmistress, does not know that he is the illegitimate son of the old Baron de Mondésir. The Baron dies and in happy amazement, Bienaimé finds he is the sole heir to the deceased's estate. But he should be careful, for two crooks, Waldemar and Erika, are after his newly-acquired wealth.