Enredo

A romance between young Parisians, shown through a series of vignettes.

Paul is young, just demobbed from national service in the French Army, and disillusioned with civilian life. As his girlfriend builds herself a career as a pop singer, Paul becomes more isolated from his friends and peers ('the children of Marx and Coca Cola', as the credits announce) and their social and emotional politics.—D.Giddings <darren.giddings@newcastle.ac.uk>

A series of vignettes about youth culture in current day urban France are presented. These vignettes are tied together by a central thread, the story of twenty-one year old Paul, who witnesses or overhears many of these happenings. He has just completed his eighteen month mandatory military service, and thus is just beginning the real phase of being what would be considered his adult life. His thoughts affected by events around him like the Vietnam War, Paul gets a job writing through an acquaintance, Madeleine, an aspiring pop singer, which is contrary to Paul's more traditional cultural leanings of baroque music and literature. The two begin to date, and out of circumstance Paul eventually ends up moving in with Madeleine and her two roommates Elisabeth and Catherine. Paul, who believes he has fallen in love with Madeleine, doesn't know what their future holds as he spends time with all three women, to which Paul's friend, fellow writer Robert, aspires. As Paul changes careers to working for a public opinion polling firm, he may have what he considers a better understanding of life as he listens to the opinions of his contemporaries.—Huggo