1979: Cousins Carole and Jérôme go on an organized trip to Odessa, behind the Iron Curtain. During the day, posing as tourists celebrating their engagement, they visit monuments and museums. In the evening they slip away from the group and meet “refuseniks”, Jews persecuted by the Soviet regime for wanting to leave the country. While Carole is motivated by political commitment and a taste for risk, Jérôme’s motivation is Carole.

Judith, a young nurse, is so meek in front of her husband Roland, that she can't manage to tell him that she has lost her job. When he learns this, he starts to follow her...He discovers that in a secret life, she is another mysterious and sublime person.

The life in a Catalan (Southern France) village near the border may be quite boring. A young man who is escaping from his homeland is seeking for something and may find it in this weird place. You see the relationship between the people in the village, their dreams, their past and their perspectives in life. The foreigner is hosted there and is messed in the deep whereabouts of these people and tries somehow to fit in.

Bruno, a communist newspaper journalist, is suffering a mid-life crisis. Torn between his wife Gaëlle and his young girlfriend Nathalie, his political beliefs battered by the wind of history, Bruno seems to have lost his bearings.

When 21 year-old Leo, the oldest of four brothers, announces to his rural French family that he's HIV positive, his family quickly rallies around him. Leo travels to Paris with his youngst brother Marcel for treatment. When Leo tries to push his brother away to protect him, the love and loyalty of the two brothers is tested.

Someone we hear talking - but whom we do not see - speaks of a project which describes the four key moments of love: meeting, physical passion, arguments/separation and making up. This project is to be told through three couples: young, adult and old. We do not know if the project is for a play, a film, a novel or an opera. The author of the project is always accompanied by a kind of servant. Meanwhile, two years earlier, an American civil servant meets with an elderly French couple who had fought in the Resistance during World War II, brokering a deal with a Hollywood director to buy the rights to tell their story. The members of the old couple's family discuss heatedly questions of nation, memory and history.

Teenager Luc lives with his mother Liliane and his little brother Paul in Paris, has to cope with the fact that his mother is a prostitute and practically raise his brother alone. Luc is disillusioned. One day, little Paul wants to phone his grandmother in Nord-pas-de-Calais, one thing leads to another and suddenly the whole family finds themselves in a holiday in northern France. For Liliane it means a reunion with her mother, for Luc and Paul the reunion with their grandmother. And then someday on the beach Luc gets to know Manuel who teaches him lessons in love, life, fun, teenagerhood and friendship.

In Paris in 1935, a young Jewish woman married to an anti-fascist activist befriends her neighbor who is dating a far-right supporter.

Seventeen-year-old Emma is invited to filmmaker Paul’s house after sending him the outline of a film. Ostensibly there to work on the outline with him she spends her time flirting with Paul, his wife, and his daughter.