Although he is something of a layabout, and is still living with his mother, her death comes as something of a shock to Louis Pelletier (Gilbert Sicotte). Still, he has hopes of some sort of legacy and believes that his relatives will help him find a job. All his hopes are dashed when, before the funeral, his three aunts come to Quebec City to settle their sister's estate. As grasping and efficient a crew as ever strode a parlor, by the time they leave, the estate has been cleaned to the bones, as if by vultures.
Bernadette has a yen to chuck it all and go back to nature, in this French-language Canadian film. That's just what she does after carefully leaving her wedding ring where her affluent husband, a lawyer, can see it. She has bought a farm, complete with a run-down farmhouse and a live-in cranky old man. Soon, because of the wonderful effects that her sympathy and her outsider's perspective have, her neighbors perceive great improvements in their lives. They attribute these changes to something miraculous (perhaps taking a cue from her name), and hordes of needy people descend on her farm.
Two incredibly primitive backwoods types have just been released from prison for kidnapping the local police chief's daughter but still have a hankering for a woman. When they return to their campsite, they discover a woodland nymph whom they both bed and who drives them wild. Jealousy arises.
A half-cast used cars salesman wants anything from the white society and is ready to do anything to get it. But when he is accused of murdering his half-sister who was killed with his rifle, he flees to an indian village. He doesn't feel any more at home there than in the white city. He decides to go back to find and punish the killer.
The film is a continuation of the story of Tom Sawyer and his friends, the second part of the Romanian screenplay after the famous novel by Mark Twain. The three friends Tom, Huck and Becky continue their adventures full of puzzles and suspense.
We witness the race for marriage of thousands of young people, wanting at all costs to escape conscription, then we are transported to the war factories and we thus witness the difficulties of work in this place. Then it's the Italian campaign in 1943 and, finally, the return to Quebec where readjustment to civilian life proves more difficult than it seems. These events are experienced and told by the voice of a young man.