Maria is a cleaning lady, who is reserved, shy and clumsy. When she is assigned to the School of Fine Arts, she meets Hubert, the school's whimsical guardian. There she discovers a fascinating place where freedom, creativity and daring reign.
Jahwad is thirty years old and going nowhere fast. He flunked out of school, and slipped into petty crime. Now, he has the police on his tail. So Jahwad is no longer going nowhere, he is getting out of town as fast as he can. He hitches a ride with a schoolteacher, who is desperate at being posted to one of the toughest high schools in the Paris suburbs. The man is so frantic, he rams his car into a tree. For Jahwad, the opportunity is too good to miss, but the high school dropout hardly looks the part.
1968 and 1969 in Paris: during and after the student and trade union revolt. François is 20, a poet, dodging military service. He takes to the barricades, but won't throw a Molotov cocktail at the police. He smokes opium and talks about revolution with his friend, Antoine, who has an inheritance and a flat where François can stay. François meets Lilie, a sculptor who works at a foundry to support herself. They fall in love. A year passes; François continues to write, talk, smoke, and be with Lilie. Opportunities come to Lilie: what will she and François do?