In this complex chronicle of the evolution of a provincial family's life, the story follows three generations of at least two neighboring families from the 1890s to the 1970s. In one of many related tales, a man who was engaged to the older daughter of a farmer elopes with the younger one. After many years and the birth of five children, the man leaves his wife and family for the bright lights of the city but continues turning up from time to time, until he is finally taken into the home of one of his sons when he is a quite old man. The complex interactions of the legitimate and illegitimate children of a womanizing miner give rise to yet another set of related stories.

Two men, fortyish, worn out by their wives, abandon everything to go and live in the back of beyond. There they meet a truculent priest, a boozer, Émile who recalls them to life's simple pleasures. Calm is what they want. But soon their example inspires thousands of disorientated males...

In this film, an artist attending a party smokes some dope and develops the ability to see into the future and the past. He returns to his apartment where he sees the vision of a woman who had lived there 30 years ago. His psychedelic hallucinations increase with time. Starring Richard Leduc and Danièle Gaubert with Serge Gainsbourg who also did the score.

Julie is a young woman from Rose Hill who arrives in rural Switzerland to marry her older pen-friend Marcel. She feels unhappy until she meets Jean, a younger man. However, his father disagrees.

Paul is married, a successful engineer, and a conservative candidate in an upcoming local election. He falls in love with Adriana, a café waitress from Italy. Paul's party is very critical of foreign labour and wants to keep Switzerland to the Swiss. Where Paul falls deeper and deeper into the relationship and is ready to leave his wife, Adriana feels the social pressure growing and has to make her own decision.

In czarist Russia, a neurotic soldier and his distant cousin formulate a plot to assassinate Napoleon.

Louis, a nine-year-old boy from Paris, spends his summer vacation in a small town in Brittany. His mother Claire has lodged him with her girlfriend Marcelle and her husband Pelo while she's having her second baby. There Louis makes friends with Martine, the ten-year- old girl next door, and learns from her about life.

The young and charming Mandoline, accountant of the advertising agency Publi-Pub, has stolen documents proving that the company kept double accounts. Remorseful when she wanted to pass this evidence to a tax inspector, she decides to put the documents back in the agency's safe, but does not really know how to go about it. Her friend Marie-Charlotte, a transvestite, helps him find a young safe-drilling man in his condition, who will help him open the safe - but of course, the matter is not so simple.

A young couple of burglars, waiting for trial, marry in jail. Annick writes down her observations of the women's ward. When she hears that her lover must serve a twice as long prison sentence, she plans their escape.

Emile Magis, a modest employee, more or less ostracized by the others, would like only one thing, to be happy. Little by little he realizes that life in society is a matter of convention, lies and deception. When he has understood that cynicism rules the world, he decides to play by its untold rules and to take his revenge.