Professor Louis Delage is a kidney transplant specialist. He is so good in his field that his peers nickname him the "great man". But one day, one of his patients die during surgery and Delage starts doubting. Is he actually such a great man? To fight desperation he decides to take in the deceased child while devoting more time to Florence, his hitherto neglected wife.

Dominique, a medical student, works in a cinema to help her friend Simone Lambert, a pharmacy student. Big scandal in his bourgeois-minded family when we learn and he works and he has a friend. His father chases him away brutally. Dominique is going to live with Simone, in her sixth grade. From that day on, she receives a visit from a mysterious character who calls himself a novelist and who helps her to meet the needs of her household. Dominique discovers that this character is none other than his father: he no longer understands.