In the sterile setting of a powerful multinational, a ruthless corporate executive and her ambitious protégée bare their claws in a vicious battle for supremacy.
Amélie, a young Belgian woman, having spent her childhood in Japan, decides to return to live there and tries to integrate in the Japanese society. She is determined to be a "real Japanese" before her year contract runs out, though it precisely this determination that is incompatable with Japanese humility. Though she is hired for a choice position as a translator at an import/export firm, her inability to understand Japanese cultural norms results in increasingly humiliating demotions. Though Amelie secretly adulates her, her immediate supervisor takes sadistic pleasure in belittling her all along. She finally manages to break Amelie's will by making her the bathroom attendant, and is delighted when Amelie tells her the she will not renew her contract. Amelie realizes that she is finally a real Japanese when she enters the company president's office "with fear and trembling," which could only be possible because her determination was broken by Miss Fubuki's systematic torture.
France, 1940. German troops have just invaded the country, but in the rural idyll of the family chateau inhabited by 20-year-old Mellie with her impoverished aristocrat father Alexandre and adolescent cousin Robinson, the war still seems far away, apart from the fact that Mellie's rich and unpopular fiancé André has been drafted into the army. For Robinson and his friends the same age, including the temperamental Bertrand, the war is merely a game they play in the remoteness of the blue island in the lake.
Nounours is the nickname of a "cousin" an informer with a special arrangement with the police: he gets 10% of the drugs seized thanks to his help. When his personal contact, inspector Maurin, commits suicide, inspector Gérard Delvaux takes over. Meanwhile, judge Lambert is uncovering the illegal practices of the policemen. Her persistent investigations, which had cornered Maurin, are leading to Gérard, and also to Nounours as the source of heroin that led to recent cases of deadly overdoses. Nounours promises Gérard increasingly bigger catches which he is intent on realising before he is forced to reveal who Nounours is to judge Lambert.
Beaumarchais the Scoundrel is a biopic film based on the life of the French playwright, financier and spy Pierre Beaumarchais depicting his activities during the American War of Independence and his authorship of the Figaro trilogy of plays.
Paul and Sarah form a happy couple with no problems. But when Sarah sees Paul wrapped in the arms of a young woman her peaceful happiness collapses. She in turn takes a lover. Paul realizes that he's losing his wife and proposes a second honeymoon in Morocco...