An Experiment in Leisure explores the link between free time and creativity, between leisure and the kind of imaginative contemplation it facilitates.
Manager Pascaline and chef Angelo have been, for several years, striving toward earning the coveted "chef's hat" in the Gault Millau restaurant guide. Tonight is Valentine's Day: one of the busiest nights of the year. Angelo provides an appropriate menu and Pascaline lovingly sets the tables. As always, Pascaline has everything under control. Her customers expect a lot tonight. For every couple that has won a table they expect to get love on their plate. Hopefully nothing goes wrong.
In a luxurious hotel, the lives of 6 people cross. A story about love, life and the search for happiness.
Five close friends, all of them married, share a loft to meet their mistresses. One day they find the body of a young woman in the loft. Since there are only five keys to the loft, the five men begin to suspect each other of murder.
In a juvenile lockup, a new ward answers questions: she's Rosie, 13, no parents, a sister Irene, a brother Michel. In flashbacks we find out what happened. She lives with Irene, who's 27, whom Rosie knows is in fact her mother, but that's their secret. Irene's brother Michel, unemployed, a compulsive gambler, comes to stay with them. Around then, Irene meets Bernard; they come to care for each other. This leaves Rosie without attention, so she puts all her adolescent hopes and romantic fantasies into a relationship with Jimi, a good looking kid she sees on a bus. Is it adventures with Jimi that land her in juvie? Once she's there, why doesn't he answer her letters?