Poor Bastards is a sketch film, written by twelve authors. Mirror or projection, poor bastards have fun with everyday facts and do not tell a story, but stories. Through these short and bitter stories, are revealed all the cracks of the human race, which, in a movement of globalization and neoliberalism more and more assertive, can lead the ordinary man to be a monster of cowardice, cruelty, indifference or hypocrisy. Poor bastards from an odd angle, transcribe reality provocatively or not, always with the same ambition: to react.
On a subway train, a man announces that he's looking for someone who might be interested in him; the usual dating methods have not worked, though there's nothing wrong with him. He explains that any interested woman can just get off at the next stop. One woman looks interested...
A man discovers he's no longer as close to his ear as he once was in this absurdist comedy. Jeff is minding his own business when a phonograph record tossed from a passing car accidentally cuts off his ear. The ear falls into traffic, gets stuck on the windshield of another vehicle, and begins a long, strange journey, passing from car to car and hand to hand across the country. Jeff, however, can still hear whatever his separated ear is picking up, and is trying to follow the sounds in hopes of catching up with his former body part. However, a doctor warns him he only has a few hours to find his ear, otherwise reattachment will be impossible; in the meantime, Jeff's former girlfriend wastes several of his precious minutes with a discussion about the notion of giving their relationship another try.
Louise, a young deaf and dumb comedian, has just been named best actress of the year. She is married to Yann, twenty years her senior. But their relationship is conflicting. It seems that Yann takes a malicious pleasure in psychologically torturing Louise. A whirlwind of uncertainties where dreams collide with nightmares, anguish, submission, sadism... Louise confides in Stephanie, her best friend, who advises her to flee. Louise refuses, convinced of a better future. One evening, while Yann tortures her once again, she kills him.
Pierrette is a woman who describes herself as having "opted for the temporary on a permanent basis." After 15 years of living the good life in Switzerland, Pierrette one day packs her bags full of fashionable outfits and returns to her native Paris with no idea of what she'll do. Pierette, however, leads a charmed life; while her son is forced to work the graveyard shift at a factory due to poor job prospects, she's able to find a job right away at a high school. Pierrette soon reintroduces herself to her 23-year-old daughter and one-time best friend, trying to use her charm to skate over years of neglect. She just as suddenly finds a new beau, Ackerman, and starts helping him out with his antique business. However, what would seem like a simple matter -- buying a clock from an elderly woman -- soon turns out to be very complicated and fraught with consequence.
Riddled with debts after having been unfairly fired from his job, a star TV presenter—and inveterate womanizer—passes as a homosexual in order to get a job on a gay TV channel. While some people use the casting couch to succeed, he is determined to succeed without the couch. That's why he decides to present his cousin, a rather naive karaoke fan, as his boyfriend.
A shy French anthropologist who happens to be secretly in love with her college superior, chooses "bimbos" as the subject of her thesis. She becomes one of them in order to do that, and the professor she loves falls for her new identity.