Olivier, Rémi and Pascale are three friends who have known each other since childhood. As they approach middle age, they each experience something of a crisis in their lives. Olivier, a doctor before becoming wheelchair bound, faces a bleak future after the break up of two relationships. The fact that Rémi and his wife Estelle are unable to have children puts an increasing strain on their marriage. And Pascale, a filmmaker, is on the point of leaving her husband to pursue an affair with an opportunistic career politician.

In a summer Paris, during an epidemic, a ghostly character from another time discovers our contemporary urban life. His contemplative wandering, from afternoon to dawn, gives him ideas of alexandrines; those of Melancholia, written by Victor Hugo in 1856...